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PAT 




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PAT 


BY 

KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON 

»» 

Author of “The Story of Cecilia,” 

“A Daughter of Kings,” etc. 




New York Cincinnati Chicago 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 

Publishers of Benziger' s Magazine 
1913 




COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY BENZIGER BROTHERS 


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©Cl. A3 4 6 4 9 4 

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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER p ACE 

Prologue 7 

I Who Goes Home? .... 19 

II The Inn of Strange Meetings . 33 

III Egeria 48 

IV Boys' Love 61 

V The Cricket Match ... 75 

VI New Friends 88 

VII From the Past .... 105 

VIII A Ghost 121 

IX Pat Remembers .... 135 

X The Seventh Heaven . . . 150 

XI The Small and Narrow House . 163 

XII The III Omen .... 177 

XIII The Night of Love . . . 192 

XIV The Sentence .... 207 

XV Twilight 223 

XVI Confession 237 

XVII Parting 250 

XVIII The Story of the German Gover- 

ness 263 


5 


6 


Contents 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX The Angel with the Sword . 277 

XX The Hand of God .... 291 

XXI An Old Acqaintance . . . 306 

XXII Gone 320 

XXIII Pat is Told 334 

XXIV The Vigil 348 

XXV The Vigil ( Continued ) . . . 361 

XXVI Donna Quixote .... 371 

XXVII The End of the Search . . 382 


PROLOGUE 


Prince Peter of Fiirstenburg, Father Peter 
to the little world of Fenmoor, was going to a 
Christmas party. He had brushed his clothes 
carefully; his housekeeper, Miss McGrath, 
was half blind and could not be trusted to do it 
properly : he had cleaned his boots and polished 
them till they shone : that rascal Tommy, who 
was acolyte and what not, had not turned up. 
Father Peter had been a noted dandy when he 
was Prince Peter and attached to the Legation 
— a younger son of a younger son of the Impe- 
rial House: he was really as particular to-day 
in his way. The spats on his shoes were always 
the same, winter and summer. His Roman 
collar must not be frayed while there was a 
scissors left to trim it. Having made his care- 
ful toilet, Father Peter, once Prince Peter, set 
out to walk to Field Manor. 

If I told you all the hindrances Father Peter 
met with on his way to Field Manor, it would 
take up quite a chapter. There was a man who 
wanted to take the pledge from Father Peter, 
but was quite determined not to take it till 
7 


8 


Prologue 


to-morrow morning after one glorious bout 
over night. 

This case required some persuasion before 
Father Peter was free to proceed on his way; 
yet the worst of it was that Father Peter had 
an overwhelming sense of humor, although he 
never saw the humor of his own proceedings 
as other people did. He had a deal of diffi- 
culty in controlling his risible faculties while 
the applicant for the pledge, who was an old 
soldier, fought hard for his last drink. 

Finally, there was Mrs. Duval, the bore of 
his little congregation, who buttonholed him 
all the way to Field Manor with complaints 
of the other lady members of his flock. She 
had hardly finished when the door of Field 
Manor opened to admit him and Mousquetaire, 
his poodle, who was his almost inseparable 
companion and was the great-grandson, or the 
great-great-grandson, of a Mousquetaire who 
had followed at his heels in Piccadilly and 
Bond Street when he was a golden youth and 
attached to the Legation thirty years ago. 

It was a muggy December day outside. 
Father Peter was uneasily aware of a few 


Prologue 


9 


spots of mud on his carefully polished shoes 
under the spats — more than a handkerchief 
would flick away as it would flick the summer’s 
dust. 

He wiped his shoes very carefully on the 
mat. In the distance he could hear the sounds 
of merriment, bursts of childish laughter, 
dancing of little feet, and his face lit up. He 
adored children, and the smaller, the better. 
The two small daughters of the house — Phil, 
otherwise Philomena, and Betty — were his 
cherished friends. Something of the shabbi- 
ness of his clothes was certainly due to the 
trampling of their small feet when he was their 
elephant, their bear, their menagerie, in fact, 
when they climbed him by the shoulders and 
stood on his head to touch the ceiling. He 
was usually a very rumpled, tousled, and dusty 
person when these romps were over and only 
able to face his world after going through a 
process of washing and brushing. 

As he took off his coat and his shovel hat 
he lifted his face towards the short broad stair- 
case that led to the drawing-room. The stairs 
were lit by a yellow lantern high overhead. 


10 


Prologue 


It was no more than three-thirty on the 
December day and the gleam of the yellow 
glass above strove with the dim lamplight and 
gave an effect of mingled golds. 

The white-panelled walls, the few good 
pictures, the one or two fine, austere pieces of 
furniture, the dim, beautiful Persian rugs gave 
an impression of a taste delicate and refined. 
The house was a fit setting for the gracious 
form of Mrs. Evelyn, the mother of Phil and 
Betty, the mistress of Field Manor, a delicate, 
flower-like creature who appealed to Father 
Peter scarcely less than her lovely children. 

He made his way to the drawing-room. A 
dance was in progress and he picked his way 
round the walls to where Mary Evelyn sat close 
by the fire. 

Phil and Betty were with her. They were 
not dancing. Most of the little guests were a 
good deal older than the two daughters of the 
house. They stood by their mother’s knee, 
dark-eyed, dark-haired little creatures in their 
short-waisted frocks of white satin. 

As he made his way through the small 
dancers he saw Phil turn and hide her face on 


Prologue 


11 


her mother’s knee in a sudden fit of shyness. 
Her curling dark hair, wreathed quaintly with 
white roses, showed up on her mother’s dress 
of white and gold. Mrs. Evelyn put out a 
hand and touched the dark head with a tender 
reassurance. Usually she was quick to catch 
the children to her breast. She was not easy 
to know and Father Peter’s first revelation of 
her had been when she had picked up Betty 
one day that the little lady had fallen down 
and was roaring lustily and had comforted her. 
Mrs. Evelyn comforting her little daughter 
had seemed to Father Peter a revelation of 
all the possible exquisiteness of women, of 
mothers. He had quoted softly to himself : 

“Since God could not be everywhere at once 
He made mothers.” 

He reached Mrs. Evelyn’s side and she made 
a place for him. Phil, looking round shyly and 
fearfully at the alarming throng of gaily 
dressed, self-possessed little boys and girls, who 
would try to coax her out of her solitude, 
caught sight of Father Peter and turned to him 
with happy confidence. Betty followed suit. 

Father Peter took them one upon either 


12 


Prologue 


knee. Mousquetaire, an old friend, too, sat 
up, begging to be taken notice of. 

“And who is this?” asked Father Peter, lean- 
ing to look at the child on Mrs. Evelyn’s lap 
who had dispossessed Phil and Betty. 

He was an extraordinarily beautiful child 
as he lay, half awake and half asleep, in Mrs. 
Evelyn’s arms. He was flushed with sleep and 
the pale golden hair coming down in a straight 
line on his forehead was a little damp with 
perspiration. His eyes, heavy with sleep, were 
deeply, darkly blue. The little body was clad 
in shining white satin and the rosy feet were 
bare. The child could have been no more than 
three. He looked at Father Peter, his little 
hand playing lazily with a golden tassel of 
Mrs. Evelyn’s dress. 

Something struck the priest, accustomed to 
observe the human manifestations. Mrs. 
Evelyn held this strange child with an even 
greater tenderness than he had seen her hold 
her own children. Her arms cradled him as 
though she would protect him against some- 
thing that threatened his golden and white inno- 
cence. She had no eyes for the moment for her 


Prologue 


13 


own little girls, who were, more than ever, to 
Father Peter’s mind, like the brown pansies in 
his beloved little garden behind his half-ruined 
cottage amid the slums at Fenmoor. 

“Isn’t he like a sleepy bee?” Mrs. Evelyn 
asked. She had a beautiful voice full of ten- 
der inflections. “This is Pat, Father Peter. 
Say ‘How d’ye do’ to Father Peter, Pat.” 

Pat said how d’ye do, and shaking off the 
cloud of slumber that hung about him like a 
palpable mist, he sat up to observe the dancing. 
Presently, the dancing floor being clearer, he 
was persuaded by Phil to dance with her; and 
the two little figures bobbed up and down, 
round and round, on the floor. 

A cheerful young aunt who was helping the 
revels coaxed Betty to dance. All the mothers 
were busy with their children or watching them. 
Father Peter and Mrs. Evelyn, sitting a little 
way back into one of the alcoves which were 
either side the fireplace, were for the moment 
in a solitude. 

“But — Pat?” he asked, with an uplifting of 
his fine eyebrows. “Pat is . . . something new, 
is it not?” 


14 


Prologue 


A cloud of trouble fell over Mrs. Evelyn’s 
fair face. Her eyes lightened and darkened. 

“Ah!” she said. “Little Pat!” 

It was said under her breath. Only one 
quite close to her could have heard it. It con- 
veyed somehow to the priest’s mind a bound- 
less compassion. 

“He is just Pat to the rest of the world here,” 
she said. “To you he is . . . Pat” — she whis- 
pered the name — “Poor little darling!” 

“So!” The compassion in the priest’s voice 
echoed her own. “The unfortunate . . . lady 
. . . they said . . . was very beautiful.” 

“Pat is the image of her. Poor Harry was 
an old friend. She looked like an angel . . . 
so innocent. We would not believe it, Hum- 
phrey and I, till it was proved without a doubt. 
We could understand Harry’s infatuation 
about her, his belief in her to the very last. 
When she was proved to be what she is by her 
own confession I think it unhinged his mind. 
Poor fellow — I think when he did it he was 
quite beside himself. You don’t know how he 
worshipped her.” 

They talked in half-phrases. Humphrey 


Prologue 


15 


Evelyn, playing, tireless, at the piano for the 
children’s dancing, sent a smile in the direction 
of his wife, a smile that spoke of perfect sym- 
pathy, perfect understanding. 

“We went there at once,” she said. “As 
soon as ever we heard. The house was in the 
hands of the police. There was a curious crowd 
in the street. All manner of people, newspaper 
men, angry creditors, mere morbid sightseers 
were trying to gain admittance. The poor 
fellow lay in an upper room. He looked quite 
young and peaceful. He was not disfigured 
at all. Pat was sitting in his high chair in the 
nursery crying piteously for his daddy, his 
mamma. His nurse had forgotten him and 
was gossiping over the rack and ruin in the 
servants’ hall. We just carried off Pat as he 
was, out of all the horror. The little soul has 
no idea. He still looks for his daddy, his 
mamma. Oh, it’s harrowing, Father Peter. 
Last night when Humphrey came home — he’s 
very fond of Humphrey — I had no more judg- 
ment than to ask Pat, just in bed, to guess who 
had come. I shall never forget the lighting up 
of his face as he guessed, ‘Daddy!’ and the pite- 


16 


Prologue 


ous falling when I had to confess it was only 
Humphrey.” 

The little aimless dancing of the two children 
came to an end. 

“Humphrey has been there again,” Mrs. 
Evelyn went on. “There was an auction, you 
know. The place was full of hook-nosed, dirty 
Jew dealers. It was horrible. They were pull- 
ing all the things to pieces — even her pretty 
frocks — such as had been left by the French 
maid, who had made a hasty flight with what- 
ever she chose to take. Humphrey said the 
house gave him a terrible impression of ruin, 
disaster, flight. Poor Pat’s toys still littered 
the nursery floor. There were some little 
clothes of his lying on his cot. Where Harry’s 
head had lain there was a dark stain.” 

She shuddered and the pupils of her eyes 
were dilated. 

They had not noticed that the children were 
coming back. Some one intercepted Phil on 
the way; but Pat, eluding those who would 
have spoken to him, made straight for Father 
Peter. The priest’s compassionate heart, 
quivering with sadness for what he had heard, 


Prologue 


17 


melted within him. He took the little golden 
and white thing into his arms. Pat, child of 
calamity, had laid hold on Father Peter’s heart 
for as long as life lasted. 








CHAPTER I 

WHO GOES HOME? 

a good deal of water has flowed under the 
bridges since that children’s party at 
Field Manor where Father Peter and Pat had 
first met. 

The time is June and Father Peter is weed- 
ing his sweet peas in his little garden at Fen- 
moor. It is the same little house, condemned 
long ago by the local authorities and bought 
by Father Peter for his own residence, a 
shabby little stucco-fronted house, with dia- 
mond-paned windows and a green porch over 
the hall-door. Every summer for many years 
now Father Peter has made the tiny garden in 
front, the hardly bigger garden at the back, 
blossom like the rose. 

He is distracted to-day as he puts away his 
tools and begins to read his Office, pacing up 
and down the path between the hedge of briar 
roses and the bed of pinks. Something has 
moved him out of his usual placidity, a placid- 
ity which has hardly been stirred these many 
19 


20 


Who Goes Home? 


years, though time was when Prince Peter of 
Fiirstenburg had been fiery. There is another 
Mousquetaire at his heels instead of the Mous- 
quetaire of twenty years ago, just as arrogant, 
as clever, as devoted as his predecessors. 

There is another housekeeper in Father 
Peter’s kitchen watching the priest through the 
barred windows as he reads his Office — scarcely 
more satisfactory than the Miss McGrath of 
old, but devoted to Father Peter who, as was 
his way, had given employment to one natu- 
rally unemployable. 

Many changes. Perhaps the least change 
of all in Father Peter, splendidly hale and 
hearty at seventy years of age, with the step 
and activity of a young man and the same little 
air as of old of something like dandyishness, 
despite the shabbiness of his cassock, the black 
of which has become rusty brown by long use. 

There is a tinkle of a bell at a little distance 
— the hall-door bell which makes a thin jangle. 
Father Peter looks up with an air of happy 
anticipation, laying the beaded book-marker 
in the page of his breviary at which he has 
left off. 


Who Goes Home? 


21 


The housekeeper appears, a thin, jaded 
looking woman with red rims to her eyes, con- 
stitutionally miserable. 

“Mr. Mayne, Father,” she says. 

Father Peter’s face composes itself. 

“Mr. Mayne,” he says, “a young gentle- 
man?” 

“An elderly gentleman, Father.” 

“Ah, of course — Pat’s train is not due for 
half-an-hour yet,” the priest says to himself as 
he turns towards the house. 

When Father Peter came in Cuthbert 
Mayne was standing by the chimney-piece, 
looking much too tall for the little room despite 
his bowed shoulders. He was examining with 
interest a crucifix on the mantel-piece, a beau- 
tiful piece of carved ivory inlaid with jewels 
on a background of crystal. Rubies for blood- 
drops, emeralds for the Crown of Thorns, 
something too precious for the poor little room, 
which has other treasures if one took the trou- 
ble to examine. 

Cuthbert Mayne turned a refined, weary 
face about as the priest entered. 


22 


Who Goes Home ? 


“You did not expect me, Highness,” he said. 

Father Peter made a little gesture of depre- 
cation, flinging both hands out in one of the 
ways by which he reminded one constantly that 
he was not English. 

“Not that title, please, Mr. Mayne,” he said. 
“Please, Father Peter. It is what I am used 
to.” 

“As you please,” Cuthbert Mayne assented. 
“By the way, I was at Hochstadt in April. 
I saw your nephew riding at the head of his 
regiment.” 

“Ah yes — my own old regiment.” Father 
Peter had given up the sword for diplomacy. 
He closed his eyes. He was remembering 
those who had been of the First Imperial 
Dragoons with him. There was Fritz, dear 
fellow, dead and gone. There was Paul — ah, 
his day had gone down in a disgraceful death. 
Maximilian had married a dancer and been 
cashiered from his regiment. Heinrich had 
succeeded his father as Grand Duke; he had 
seen a portrait of him the other day grown 
fat out of memory. Perhaps any of them 
might have envied Father Peter, whom God 


Who Goes Home ? 


23 


had called in the flower of his youth, who was 
wont to speak of himself as a great conversion, 
because, like St. Francis of Assisi, he had 
sung and been gay and rustled in silks and 
velvets and swaggered in uniform at his 
father’s Court long ago. 

The reminiscence took no more than a few 
seconds of time. 

“Ah yes, my own old regiment,” he said: 
“Franz is a fine fellow: a very fine fellow. I 
have not seen him since the Coronation. They 
ask me to return, but it is to bridge a great 
gulf. And your nephew ?” 

“I saw Pat also. Impossible to mistake 
him even among the fair Saxons. He has 
kept his unusual fairness. The white and 
gold uniform becomes him. He is a very fine 
horseman. The horse he was riding was 
startled by a cow suddenly plunging from a 
side street right under his feet. Pat sat him 
like a centaur. I wonder how he will like it — 
in an English shire.” 

“He need not have come back,” Father 
Peter said, almost wistfully. “My brother 


24 


Who Goes Home? 


would have seen to him. He would be taken 
care of. ...” 

“I know. His Highness has been very 
good. But.... Pat is an Englishman, half- 
English, half-Irish, that is to say. He is not 
a German. I only hope that he is not quite 
a foreigner in all his ways.” 

“It seemed the only thing to do — at the 
time,” Father Peter said, with an apologetic 
air. 

“Ah, to be sure.” Mr. Mayne went back to 
his inspection of the Crucifix, lifting it up and 
examining it curiously. “A beautiful thing 
you have here.” 

“My sister-in-law’s gift. Hardly fit for a 
poor priest. I would sell it if I might and 
give the money to the poor.” 

“I should be afraid of it — in this little 
house.” 

“People are very good,” Father Peter said 
simply. “They have but to turn the handle 
and come in. The door is never fastened.” 

“Some day you will have a burglary,” Cuth- 
bert Mayne said, “and this beautiful thing 
will vanish.” 


Who Goes Home? 


25 


“I hope not/’ said Father Peter, and looked 
at his watch. “I hope not. Mathilde’s gift. 
But it wants ten minutes to the time of Pat’s 
train. I thought of meeting him. You will 
come?” 

“If you will excuse me I should prefer to 
await you here.” He passed his long, thin 
hand over his brow and the weariness of his 
expression deepened. Father Peter under- 
stood. 

“As you will,” he said, and took a pinch of 
snuff from a little box he had extracted from 
the pocket of his cassock. Snuff was Father 
Peter’s one luxury, the compensation for wine, 
for cigars, foregone, for vile cookery inflicted 
on him by a whole line of incompetent house- 
keepers. He passed the box to Cuthbert 
Mayne, who examined the little picture finely 
painted on the lid without taking any snuff. 

“You need not be afraid of Pat, Mr. 
Mayne,” he said gently. “It was the only 
way — to lift him clean out of the world in 
which the baby life had been all but wrecked 
into one happier. The Principality has served 
its turn. Pat has had a happy boyhood, a 


26 


Who Goes Home? 


happy young manhood. He is the gayest of 
the gay, my sister-in-law tells me. You have 
seen for yourself. But he has formed no ties 
to bind him to Fiirstenburg. He comes home 
with passionate ardor to his own country.” 

“When he asks me why he has been banished 
from it all these years what am I to answer 
him?” Cuthbert Mayne asked. “I confess, 
Highness — I beg your pardon, Father Peter 
— these things lie heavily on my heart. I am 
a bad dissimulator. Though I have been 
Cuthbert Mayne for twenty years the old 
name comes easily to my lips still. I am 
always on the edge of betrayal. Won’t he 
ask me a hundred questions? I have denied 
myself the joy of his companionship — for 
fear. His father, his mother — if he asks me 
of them, what am I to say?” 

“I should answer him truthfully — up to 
that time. They both died young. What 
more is there. That poor woman! Surely 
she died, to her own life. She is not the same 
now. No one would ever recognize her.” 

Father Peter watched the averted face wist- 


Who Goes Home? 


27 


“She is a great penitent,” he said. 

“She ought to be,” Cuthbert Mayne 
responded with a fierceness strange in one so 
gentle. “She has done enough harm.” 

“She has done a great deal of good since,” 
said the priest. “And — she was very young.” 

“It was no excuse. It added to the wicked- 
ness. That anything so young — looking 
such a creature of innocence and light, could 
have been so wicked. If she had only told the 
truth at last, her wickedness to her friends. 
It is not easy to believe in the repentance of 
anything so wicked.” 

The priest shrugged his shoulders. 

“My friend,” he said, “God measures the sin 
and grants the repentance. What are you or 
I to judge?” 

“Not you, perhaps,” answered Cuthbert 
Mayne stubbornly. “I have some right to 
judge. She ruined my life as well as Harry’s. 
Is it nothing that I am forced by her act 
to discard even my own name? When I 
sold Forest it nearly broke my heart. I had 
to cut myself adrift from her, to be lost, 
dropped into a world that did not know me 


28 


Who Goes Home? 


because of her. It would not have been so 
easy if I had not been something of a recluse 
by nature. I am not safe even yet. Two 
years ago a man stopped me in the Strand 
addressing me as .... by that name. ‘Mr. 
Luttrell,’ he said” — he peered fearfully about 
the room as though he dreaded being over- 
heard and the sweat stood on his forehead. 
“It was a man I used to buy books from. He 
remembered me over the years and the changes 
in my looks. ‘Mr. Luttrell,’ he said. ‘My 
name is not Luttrell,’ I answered him. ‘My 
name is Mayne.’ He looked at me in a stu- 
pefied way. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. 
‘I made sure that you were Mr. Luttrell of 
Forest to whom I sold the finest book that ever 
passed through my hands. It was a Book of 
Hours and every letter of it was illuminated.’ 
Do you think it was easy for me?” he asked 
with sudden passion, “to lie like that, to deny 
my name? That lies at her door with her 
other iniquities.” 

The priest sighed, as he only sighed, being 
a very cheerful person by nature, when the sins 


Who Goes Home f 


29 


and troubles of others pressed hardly upon 
him. 

“You have suffered greatly, my son,” he 
said. “But — she repents truly. I have never 
seen a greater repentance. She is tortured by 
the thought of her husband and son.” 

“I will go into your garden,” said Cuthbert 
Mayne, “and wait for my nephew among the 
flowers. Perhaps I ought not to have come 
to-day. I am disturbed by the thought of 
seeing Harry’s boy again. I ought to have 
waited for him at Grayes.” 

“Oh, but,” said Father Peter, “it is quite 
right that you should come — his one remain- 
ing relative. There are only you and I and 
the Evelyns to remember him.” 

“The Evelyns were at Hochstadt when I 
was there. Mrs. Evelyn told me they saw a 
good deal of Pat. The two girls have grown 
up charming creatures. Apparently they 
were very gay at Hochstadt, thanks to their 
Highnesses. Pat was in constant attendance. 
So Mrs. Evelyn told me. I rather wondered 
they cared .... for it.” 


30 


Who Goes Hornet 


“Ah, Mrs. Evelyn is very unworldly,” said 
the priest. 

“But very proud.” 

Cuthbert Mayne seemed to take a positive 
pleasure in hurting himself. 

“There are different prides, my son,” said 
Father Peter. “Mrs. Evelyn would not 
accept the world’s standard. She loves Pat 
like a son.” 

“And Humphrey Evelyn is just the same as 
of old — an honest bucolic kind of person, with 
an inexplicable love of music and the wit to 
see that he has married an adorable woman.” 

Father Peter took his stick and his hat and 
set out on the walk down the white dusty road 
to the railway-station. He was glad to have 
left Mr. Mayne in his garden among the 
flowers. Poor fellow, how harassed, how 
worn he looked! 

His thoughts went from Cuthbert Mayne’s 
grief to the lunch. He hoped it would be fit 
for his guests to eat. The joint and the 
sweet would probably, nay certainly, be spoilt 
in the cooking. He sighed a little ruefully as 
he recognized the inevitability of that. But 


Who Goes Home? 


31 


the salad which he had picked with his own 
hands, which he alone must dress — the salad, 
with the little bit of Brie, and the rolls and 
butter, would atone: and the coffee which he 
also would make: and his little dish of early 
strawberries. Miss Fitt could not spoil those. 

And after all on a hot day who wanted the 
joint or the heavy uneatable sweet? There 
was cream for the strawberries — an unpar- 
donable extravagance for a poor priest, only* — 
it was the day of Pat’s home-coming. And 
there was a bottle of white wine. 

Father Peter stepped out more cheerfully 
as he recognized that Miss Fitt could not spoil 
his part of the lunch. And, thank the good 
God, though the sun was high overhead, there 
were green hedges by the roadside into which 
his eyes could look away from the dust and 
glare. The hedges had been new-washed by 
a shower only yesterday. 

The birds were singing too ; and through the 
singing broke shrilly the sound of the whistle 
of Pat’s train. As the railway station came 
in view Father Peter’s yet long sight saw that 
the train was signalled. His heart was glad 


32 


Who Goes Home f 


within him because his old eyes were going to 
feast on the sight of Pat, golden and white 
Pat, who had laid hold on his heart long ago. 

He hurried on, uplifted with a great joyful- 
ness. Then he sent a sorrowful thought 
towards the poor woman who had sinned and 
repented, who had her moments of joy still 
like a child when the shadow was lifted up — 
Father Peter was glad that she could some- 
times forget and be joyful, looking on it as 
the mercy of God — yet who craved for her 
son incessantly and never could hear him call 
her “Mother” in this world. 


CHAPTER II 

THE INN OF STRANGE MEETINGS, 

noyes looked out of her garden gate 
to see the new owner of Grayes and his 
nephew go by. 

At least she had not expected to see Cuth- 
bert Mayne, and the discovery that there were 
two riders instead of one sent her scurrying 
into shelter behind a heavy bush of flowering 
syringa. 

Morning after morning she had stood at the 
gate to see young Mr. Mayne go by. He rode 
early — about eight o’clock in the morning, 
and his horsemanship was a delight to see. 
He had a fiery young bay horse, and he liked 
to make him caracole in the leafy lane, where 
the dew was not yet dried off the grass. Mrs. 
Noyes had watched him morning after morn- 
ing, in a frenzy of unsatisfied love, of delight 
in his bonniness, his fair beauty, his strength 
and agility, in terror for him when the horse 
reared and curvetted, in a longing that he 
might look at her and speak to her, in a dread 
33 


34 The Inn of Strange Meetings 

that if his eyes rested on her she might drop 
down from the sheer shock of joy, of fear. 

After he went by the event of the day was 
over for Mrs. Noyes. She had a deal to do. 
Golden Green was a long straggling village 
with certain offshoots, and she was the district 
nurse. There were a great many painful, 
repulsive tasks to be got through morning 
after morning, even when the village was free 
from an epidemic of any sort. The natural 
woman in Mrs. Noyes hated it: she hated the 
poulticing and the washing and the dressing of 
sores and ulcers, the cleansing of dirty bodies 
that came her way every day. It never 
became easier by use. It was the measure of 
her penitence that she had chosen the nurse’s 
life which she loathed. Yet she was very 
patient with the cross-grained old sick people 
and the fretful children. The world in which 
she might have been impatient, might have 
run away from tasks that nauseated her, was 
left behind forever. 

To her own mind she was no true penitent 
because of the strange, unexpected well-spring 
of joy that would rise and bubble and flow in 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


35 


her on the smallest provocation. A quaint 
saying of one of her old patients, a word with 
a child or a dog, the discovery of a bird sit- 
ting on its eggs in the hedge, the opening of 
a flower, the smell of the sun- warmed pines: 
so many things would make her eagerly happy, 
who had no right to happiness. 

When she was free of her work she looked 
to her garden and her house. The house, no 
bigger than a doll’s house, was very pleasant: 
so was the tiny garden packed tightly with 
flowers. It was part of her fecklessness to the 
neighbors’ minds that she did not grow vege- 
tables, but only flowers. Her excuse, half- 
merry, half -humble, that she had no time to 
cook vegetables was received with the con- 
tempt it deserved. “If she was what she ought 
to be and not traipsin’ after foolishness,” said 
old Mother Hatch, whom she nursed regularly 
through the bronchitis every winter, “she’d 
have time to cook a few vegetables in a pot.” 

The old people grumbled at her a good deal. 
No one could say she neglected them, but as 
Job Harris said, “Mrs. Noyes had no sarious- 
ness to her. When a man was twisted with 


36 The Inn of Strange Meetings 

the rheumatics as he was he liked the one as 
were rubbing him to have a sarious mind: she 
were fly-away, were Nurse Noyes. Why she 
laughed fit to die only because he said as how 
his old house were that draughty that it would 
give a wild duck the rheumatics.” 

It was quite true that Mrs. Noyes had often 
to remind herself that she was a penitent, that 
she had wrought dreadful mischief in the past 
— more than she could undo though she had 
twenty lives to live. She would remember 
and shudder and run away from the birds and 
the flowers to those vigils on her knees in 
which the past came down upon her and 
washed the life and hope out of her heart. 

But she would be glad again. Her heart 
would leap up when the early bird wakened 
her. No matter how she reminded herself 
that joy was not for her, that she should go in 
sackcloth and ashes all the days of her life, 
the joy would bubble up on the least provo- 
cation. 

“Poor child!” Father Peter had said when 
she had confessed to him with tears the horrible 
lightness of her nature which put her out of 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 37 

the category of true penitents. “Poor child! 
It is one of the little mercies of God.” 

He said the same, but to himself, when he 
heard that Mr. Mayne out of all the places he 
might have lived had chosen Grayes, with 
Golden Green a mile or two from its gates. 
Coincidences were nothing to Father Peter, 
who had a great simplicity. The word was 
only intended to explain away the methods by 
which the good God arranged the affairs of 
His world: and to Father Peter’s mind there 
was nothing so small in the happenings of the 
world that God was not concerned with it. 

Not chance, but God, had brought Pat to 
live within a mile or two of Golden Green — 
of the district nurse’s house. 

If things had been the other way about — 
if Mrs. Noyes had chosen Golden Green, 
Cuthbert Mayne being already the owner of 
Grayes, he might have found it his duty to 
counsel her against choosing that one spot. 
He might have warned her pityingly against 
snatching at a joy which must in the nature 
of things lacerate her heart. He would have 
warned her of the danger of betrayal, know- 


38 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


in g that she dreaded, more than anything in 
the world, that her son should know of her 
existence and her history. In that dread she 
was entirely at one with Cuthbert Mayne. If 
her nature had been capable of the black 
depths of despair, or of the furious impulses 
which make people put an end to their lives, 
she would have killed herself because of the 
dead. She was not capable of either of those 
things. It was her nature to live and endure 
suffering, tempered with bursts of joy. 

When she had heard from Father Peter 
that Cuthbert Mayne had bought Grayes out 
of all the houses of England that he might 
have bought, she was tossed in seas of fear and 
joy and hope and indecision. What was she to 
do? She was established at Golden Green 
and better liked by the people than they sus- 
pected. She had grown to love her little 
house and garden, where the tender mercies of 
God had grown up thickly about her, where 
she had been irrationally happy and had gone 
under the ploughshares of suffering. 

Must she go? 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 39 

She waited for the answer from Father 
Peter as for a message of life or death. 
Would he bid her go and give up the passion- 
ate anticipation of seeing her son’s face, only 
guessed at, only imagined, from the golden 
bud of his babyhood? She thought that if 
Father Peter bade her go — out into the 
wilderness, for she had been making roots in 
this quiet place — she could not go till she had 
seen Pat’s face from a distance once. 

The answer which she dreaded — when it 
came she did not dare to open the envelope, 
but left it lying at a little distance while she 
sat by the table with her face hidden in her 
arms — was a reprieve. Since she had come 
to Golden Green by no will of her own it 
seemed, but as though to await the coming of 
Cuthhert Mayne to Grayes, then the happen- 
ing was so strange, not to be explained by any 
human law of probabilities, that Father Peter 
saw nothing for it but to do nothing, just to 
be quiet and await the manifestation of the 
Will. If Father Peter had had his way all 
the world would be quiet, would know as he 


40 The Inn of Strange Meetings 

did, the blessedness of lying still in the hands 
of God. 

Quick tears had gushed from her eyes, 
relieving her tortured heart, when she had 
read Father Peter’s reprieve. God had willed 
it that she should see her little son again. 
Her little son would be always her little son 
even though he were grown-up and gray. He 
would be always her little son. It was not at 
all to be feared that she would strive to come 
nearer to him than just that long look at him 
from a distance. Why, if her little son were 
to look grief and reproach at her she would 
die of it. No one need ever fear that she 
would disgrace and shame Pat, Father Peter 
might rest assured. That she might see Pat 
from a distance and feed her hungry eyes upon 
him was another of the little mercies, as Father 
Peter put it, that grew thick as daisies along 
her bitter way. 

Pat had been a month at Grayes. During 
that month he had foregone his early morning 
ride seldom. She would he out, waiting for 
him, behind the syringa hush when he came, 
sometimes riding headlong, sometimes walking 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


41 


his horse and singing at the top of his voice 
from sheer joy of being alive. Usually he 
would be without a hat. It was a fashion of 
young England in those days; and Pat was 
extremely desirous to be English or Irish, at 
least insular. His head had darkened very 
slightly: to an unusual extent he had kept the 
pale gold of his babyhood, not so much 
changed, though it was the head of a young 
man, from that downy head that had lain in 
her arms. 

The few days on which Pat had not come 
had been darkened days to Mrs. Noyes. 
There had been a great length of time to be 
lived through from one day to another: and 
there was always the dread that he might not 
come. She reminded herself that presently he 
would be caught into a maze of gaiety, of 
social engagements. He would go away from 
Grayes for this or that event, for visits to 
town, to country houses. It was not at all 
likely that the quietness of Grayes, with the 
society of Cuthbert Mayne, who hardly ever 
went beyond his park-gates, would content a 
golden youth like Pat. 


42 The Inn of Strange Meetings 

She prepared herself for the mornings when 
he should not come: yet when it chanced that 
her vigil was in vain she was dreadfully cast 
down. Correspondingly her joy was so great 
when he came that it sweetened the whole day 
for her. 

She had always been young — too young, 
she had often reminded herself, for a woman 
who had sinned as she had, who had ruined 
and destroyed the lives dearest to her. Yet, 
somewhat to her horror, during those days and 
weeks when she saw Pat almost daily she found 
herself growing younger; she was more ready 
to laugh; the little flowers of joy seemed to 
spring up on every side, making her foolish 
heart a feather-weight when it ought to have 
been as heavy as lead. She abhorred her own 
face in the glass. It was too young, too 
smooth, for the woman who had known and 
done such things. Would she never learn her 
lesson? Would she never realize the full 
heinousness of her own guilt? She found it 
the most difficult thing in the world to tread 
the thorns of penitence because of the unex- 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


43 


pected, unlooked-for roses that would spring 
up in the very path of her feet. 

Now, at least, seeing Cuthbert Mayne as he 
chose to call himself, for the first time since he 
had flung her a handful of silver for his dead 
brother’s sake and bidden her scornfully go 
and sin no more, she realized that she suffered. 
It was some one else, some poor child who 
escaped the rack and the thumb-screw for a 
little space to bask in the sun with other chil- 
dren. She had felt for a long time that she 
had two personalities, one foolish and soulless, 
the one that had been a thief and treacherous 
and a liar and the murderess of her husband 
in those days long ago, when suddenly into a 
life gay and irresponsible came crime and its 
punishment. The other — ah well, the other 
had not been awake in those days: the other 
had sprung out of all that wreck and ruin — 
this one that repented for the other’s sins and 
bore the burden of a suffering that had crushed 
the old life out of existence. 

Cuthbert came with his set, weary face. 
She fell on her knees as the two passed by, 
the younger, her Pat, talking at the top of 


44 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


his voice, in high, boyish spirits. She had 
always been afraid of Cuthbert, who seemed 
somehow to have known of the flaw in her 
right through. Cuthbert had never thought 
her good enough for Harry. He had seen 
through her long before the debacle . She 
looked down at her hands, shuddering as she 
knelt behind the syringa bush and heard the 
horses break into a trot, as though she saw 
blood upon them. 

She remembered how she had fallen at 
Cuthbert’s feet and implored him for a sight 
of her boy, and how he had looked at her with 
an expression of hard justice in his face and 
refused her. 

“When you have proved your penitence you 
might perhaps see him without his seeing 
you,” he had said. 

Poor woman! poor woman! Mrs. Noyes 
looked back at her anguish of that day when 
her prayer was refused with an impersonal 
and contemptuous pity. How she had suf- 
fered, poor wretch! Well, she had not taken 
Cuthbert’s pieces of silver. She had dis- 
appeared. She had seen the child after all by 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


45 


Father Peter’s help and connivance, before 
she had disappeared into the void. Only 
Father Peter knew her secret. She had kept, 
over all the years, a curious terror of Cuthbert. 
The moment in which he refused her had been 
the culmination of the years during which he 
had shown a cold distaste for her and she had 
not cared, wrapped-up as she was in Harry’s 
love and praise. 

The day was not over for Mrs. Noyes. 
Some time in the afternoon she was washing 
up in her little scullery. It was a very hot 
day, and the tasks of the morning had been 
more distasteful because of the heat, and her 
babies, young and old, had been more frac- 
tious, more unreasonable, than on a cooler 
day. She had opened the little scullery win- 
dow and a small breeze had found its way in 
and lifted the hair on her forehead and blew 
softly on her heated face and her throat, still 
round and white, from which she had removed 
the stiff collar, leaving it bare. 

The little window looked towards the road. 
Just beyond her gate the road forked, took 
two separate ways. She was gazing out into 


46 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


the cool dimness of the shady lane while she 
wiped up. Suddenly she was aware of a 
couple of riders passing the gate. 

They pulled up in consultation as to their 
way. The face of one, a man of middle age, 
turned towards the cottage and caught sight 
of her at the little window. 

“Hello,” he shouted, and the voice was 
jolly and good-natured — “which road do we 
take for Saxham, please?” 

She drew back into the obscurity of the 
room. Her heart had given a leap as though 
it would break from her side and was sud- 
denly still as though it had fallen dead. She 
could not answer. She fled away from the 
open window and to the door, which she 
locked. Behind the door, in the darkness of 
the little hall, she crouched, listening as though 
an invisible enemy should batter at her gates. 

No one came. The riders had gone on in 
search of some one more willing to direct them. 

“Stupid yokels!” said the lady. 

“The woman didn’t look like a yokel either,” 
said the man unwillingly. “You didn’t see her. 


The Inn of Strange Meetings 


47 


Kate. A pretty woman, so far as I could see 
her. We don’t look like tramps either.” 

“ A pretty little place too,” said the lady, 
looking back to Mrs. Noyes’ cottage gable 
drowned in honeysuckle. “Lonely, of course. 
No, I didn’t see the woman.” 

“She had an odd suggestion of some one,” 
said the man. “But of course, I only caught a 
glimpse of her. I dare say it was imaginary.” 


CHAPTER III 

EGERIA 

^he arrival of Pat at Grayes made some- 
thing of a sensation in the country 
roundabout, where eligible young men were 
sufficiently few to be precious. There was a 
certain romance attaching to his upbringing 
at a German Court, his life at a German Uni- 
versity, his two or three years in a German 
cavalry regiment. 

Some of the papas and brothers were at first 
inclined to receive Pat coldly, as a foreigner, 
with presumably un-English ways and sym- 
pathies. But Pat soon vanquished that hostil- 
ity. As he brought to the English country 
and the English spring a fresh eye and a 
fresh delight, so he brought with him a patriot- 
ism by which the pride of other men in 
England and the English was mere fogyism, 
parochial and of the clubs. 

48 


Egeria 


19 

Pat had laid hold on English earth with 
both hands. He made the acquaintance of 
the country he had not known with a pas- 
sionate delight. Every fresh house showing 
its twisted chimney stacks above the green and 
russet woods, every farm-steading, every 
church-tower, was a discovery to Pat. The 
English village greens with their print- 
f rocked, curtseying children, their grazing 
cattle and flocks of white golden-billed geese, 
were a perpetual delight to him. The alms-* 
houses, from which the old gaffers and gam- 
mers came wearing a dress decreed in the 
Middle Ages, awoke his delighted interest. 
Those first weeks at Grayes in which Pat dis- 
covered England daily and ran on to fresh 
discoveries, were a succession of exclamations, 
of notes of admiration. Pat was certainly 
ingenuous. No Englishman with the Eng- 
lishman’s training would have so exhibited his 
feelings. 

Cuthbert Mayne, in his recluse’s life, bright- 
ened perceptibly for Pat’s fresh, boyish delight 
in all he saw — while he looked forward to a 


50 


Egeria 


time when Pat would not be so openly joyous 
over this country of his love. 

“Un-English,” said some of the young men, 
jealous perhaps of the interest Pat excited in 
the feminine mind. They could hardly say 
un-manly. Pat’s horsemanship put theirs to 
shame. His fencing — he had succeeded in 
interesting a few in the noble art — was a 
revelation. He played cricket on the village 
green, taking the game as one to the manner 
born, and he promised to make an excellent 
cricketer. For all his golden fairness, his 
muscles were like steel. He was hard from 
head to foot. Finally, his plunging into a mill- 
pond and rescuing a baby from drowning 
proved him. He was recommended for a 
medal. Pat was as shy over the exploit as 
any Englishman, and forebore to mention that 
this was not his first life-saving by half-a- 
dozen. 

The peace of England — her castles and 
hamlets lying in the deep quietness of woods, 
^without a suggestion of bristling swords, some- 
thing of the sleeping beauty in her aspect, 
was one of the things that appealed to him 


Egeria 


51 


most. Yet he was keen on the subject of 
National Defence. Those yokels who trudged 
heavily to and fro from their work, they should 
be braced, trained, made efficient against the 
time when they should be needed. The peace 
was the surer when every man was trained to 
save it. With an energy which made him 
enemies as well as friends he began to drill the 
village lads, to teach them to walk upright in- 
stead of slouching. Certainly his enthusiasm 
was very un-English. Those who approved 
of him were yet uneasy over the enthusiasm. 
They wished that the things might have been 
done by one of themselves. 

Pat’s enthusiasm in this direction brought 
him into association with Miss Diana Mark- 
ham of Broom Hall. She was the undisputed 
great young lady of the neighborhood, al- 
though she had too many ideals to be altogether 
popular with her own sex or perhaps with the 
other. Lord Halstead, the Lord Lieutenant 
of the County, who called Miss Markham “Di” 
familiarly, not sparing to laugh at her, com- 
plained that Denis Markham had spoiled his 
little girl. “Di’s just a little too bright and 


52 


Egeria 


good for human nature’s daily food,” said his 
Lordship, who had an easy humor and con- 
fessed that he was a latitudinarian in politics 
because his sense of humor left him without 
fanaticism. He complained that Di took her- 
self too seriously. Lord Halstead, still a 
bachelor at forty, had been at Miss Markham’s 
beck and call all her days. If he had been a 
little more of a fanatic he might have made 
her beauty and pride, her spirit and charm, his 
own. But he had laughed at her, or perhaps 
she had suspected him of laughing at her and 
her sense of humor was in abeyance when it 
came to what she called the serious things of 
life. 

Diana Markham was thirty and people had 
begun to wonder if she would ever marry. She 
was a Dame of the Primrose League and she 
was a member of all the patriotic societies for 
which she was eligible. She was interested in 
all manner of charitable and philanthropic so- 
cieties, too, and her beautiful house and 
grounds were always thrown open for meet- 
ings in connection with good objects, although 
there were certain reforming movements with 


Egeria 


53 


which she refused to identify herself. Her 
philanthropy, like herself, was big and beauti- 
ful. She had given offence on one occasion by 
an unguarded reference to the district visitor’s 
idea of charity, twisting a jest out of the selfish 
axiom about charity beginning at home. 

The county had expected a marriage be- 
tween Miss Markham and Lord Halstead for 
so long that it had grown tired of expecting 
and speculating. The two parties most con- 
cerned seemed quite happy. Lord Halstead 
had begun to put on a little weight. Miss 
Markham’s beauty was no longer the beauty of 
the jeune fille. No one suspected Lord Hal- 
stead of dissatisfaction with anything in life. 
He always seemed amused, as though life 
passed him by as a piece of high comedy. “ Sel- 
fish,” said Diana Markham, when she was 
vexed with her old friend. But she took care 
to say it to the one who would not believe her, 
to Mrs. Wynne, a very remarkable old lady, 
who had kept her intellect bright and her 
sympathy keen up to eighty years of age. 

“Selfish! Not a bit of it!” Mrs. Wynne had 
said with great emphasis. “The boot’s on the 


54 


Egeria 


other foot, my dear Di. Guy’s an excellent 
landlord and good friend to his poor neigh- 
bors. He works as hard as any one on his 
public boards and all the rest of it. Why, he’s 
chairman of twenty things to say nothing of 
his being Master of the Hounds and Captain of 
the Cricket Club.” 

Miss Markham flushed a little uneasily. 
She did not ask if the boot was on her foot. 
She answered irrelevantly, a thing unworthy 
of her. 

“He’ll be getting too heavy if he doesn’t 
take care,” she said. 

“It’s a pity,” said Mrs. Wynne deliberately, 
“that he’s not married, with his children about 
him. He ought to have been married ten 
years ago.” 

To herself she said that Denis Markham’s 
bringing up of his daughter had been a mis- 
take. Di was a fine creature, something of a 
goddess. The old lady adored beauty and Di 
with her large eyes, her calm, beautifully- 
tinted face, her height and grace, to say noth- 
ing of the voice that was the greatest beauty 
of all, was a perpetual delight to her. But 


Egeria 


55 


she remembered Lord Halstead as a little boy 
in bed long ago to whom she had stolen up- 
stairs after a tediously-long dinner party, and 
spent an hour with him in the summer dusk till 
the sleepy head nodded against her bare 
shoulder. A thousand shames that Di should 
play fast and loose with him. And yet — did 
Di? Or could it be that he had played fast 
and loose with Di? There was no knowing 
the wrongs and rights of it, the human heart 
being such a subtle thing, and neither of them 
given to discussing their emotions. 

“He was a very dear little boy,” she said 
reminiscently, and then turned the conversa- 
tion to the district nurse, who was her special 
protege since there had been no nurse in those 
parts till she and Miss Markham between them 
had discovered Mrs. Noyes. Folk had had to 
die if they could not wait for the leisure of the 
nearest nurse, ten miles away, and to die in 
numbers if they could not arrange to have their 
epidemics in proper order. 

The Vicar had been complaining, not for the 
first time, that Mrs. Noyes would not go to 
Church. Mrs. Wynne had agreed that it was a 


56 


Egeria 


pity the district-nurse should not set a better 
example to the villagers, who were quite ready 
to set an example of their own in staying away. 
The Vicar thought Mrs. Wynne — Miss Mark- 
ham for the matter of that — were giving a bad 
example by not forcing Mrs. Noyes to the 
alternative of resigning or going to church. 

“My dear, good Mr. Pierpont,” Mrs. 
Wynne had said, in a towering rage, but with 
great outward gentleness, “don’t you know the 
difference between a woman who has no re- 
ligion and a woman who for some reason — 
sorrow I should say and not shame — is fright- 
ened of even the little world of Saxham? The 
best nurse we could hope to find, so devoted, 
so patient, so efficient. No indeed, my dear 
Vicar, if Mrs. Noyes will not go to Church she 
shall not be forced to go to Church.” 

On the third occasion upon which Miss 
Markham and Pat met Miss Markham told 
Pat about her father, an eloquent thing, for 
Denis Markham’s daughter was slow to speak 
of the father whose death had made a wound 
in her life hardly yet skinned over. 


Egeria 


57 


Denis Markham had been one of those 
visionary Englishmen, who, outside the region 
of practical politics, have done much to in- 
fluence the life and thought of their times. 
Never within the political arena himself, his 
friendships were with statesmen as they were 
with thinkers and doers in the arts. He had 
brought up his girl at the villa near Florence 
where his wife had died in her early woman- 
hood. Perhaps the blow of her death had 
made him unfit for the rougher usages of life. 
To the villa with the wonderful gardens had 
come the bearers of illustrious names, whom 
Diana remembered in their slippers, so to 
speak, in an easy intimacy which used Christian 
names and took no heed of ceremonies. 

To her memory her father, with his fine head, 
his sensitive mobile face propped by a nervous 
hand, had always been the center of the picture. 
The doing men had listened, had sometimes 
laughed, chaffing him with a certain gentleness, 
and had learnt lessons from him and carried 
them away with them when they went back to 
the arena. 


58 


Egeria 


The book she remembered, oddly enough, to 
have been most often in her father’s hand, was 
Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” Oddly, 
for Denis Markham would have made politics 
pure and would have had no truck with 
expediency. 

He had filled his little girl’s head with 
theories, not colored by the subtle Florentine 
in whom he delighted, but straight-forward as 
his own conduct. He had trained her as he 
would have trained a boy. She had absorbed 
his teaching in a whole-hearted feminine way, 
as perhaps no boy would have done. And 
then, on the threshold of womanhood, he had 
brought her back to England, shaped, he be- 
lieved, for her destiny so perfectly as to reward 
his devotion, her noble beauty the coping stone 
to the fine thing he had made. She had come 
to England almost as freshly as Pat himself, 
with the knowledge of other lands to make her 
see her England whole: and she had flung her- 
self with passion into its service as she saw it, 
with the greater absorption when, in the year 
following their return, her father died. 


Egeria • 


59 


Perhaps in her inner heart she would have 
preferred to be Egeria to a man who would 
have fulfilled her ideals, rather than to be 
absorbed in an impersonal passion. She was 
not likely to meet a second Denis Markham. 
He had asked at the last that his name be writ 
in water or in the hearts of his friends. His 
daughter had respected his wishes, denying the 
little world that would have delighted in his 
biography. He had been a creature of ret- 
icences, of reserves, of self-effacement always. 
It was fitting that his death should be the 
final reticence, reserve, self-effacement. 

This is insufficiently a picture of the lady 
who dazzled Pat. On his first meeting with 
her he saw her sitting in a high-backed, won- 
derfully-carved chair. She drooped a little 
forward and the hanging sleeves of her beauti- 
ful gown fell away from her white arms. The 
eyes under their large spiritual lids were hid- 
den. The lips were perhaps over-serious. 

“Careful for a whole world of sin and pain.” 
On one side of her sat JL<ord Halstead, wear- 
ing his air of restrained enjoyment of a good 
joke, which struck Pat as being as much out 


60 


Eg evict, 


of place as it would have been in a temple. 
On the other side sat Percival Freyke, a Junior 
Lord of the Treasury, who listened deferen- 
tially to what Miss Markham had to say. She 
had intellect as well as beauty and wealth and 
charm. If she had not the Junior Lord would 
have listened with just as much of an air of 
deference. He would have said himself that 
no woman should aspire to politics till she was 
forty-five at least : but of that cynical utterance 
no one would have suspected him who watched 
him talking to Diana Markham. 

The lady’s face showed a candid interest 
when Pat’s name was pronounced in her hear- 
ing. She looked up and Pat was dazzled by 
the splendor of her beautiful gray eyes. She 
was very kind, keeping Pat by her side for 
quite a long time after Lord Halstead had 
strolled away to talk to Mrs. Wynne. 

On the occasion of their third meeting with 
each other, which was after an open-air meet- 
ing in support of the National Service League 
held in Mrs. Wynne’s garden of a beautiful 
September afternoon, Diana Markham spoke 
to Pat about her father, breaking a habit of 
reticence. 


CHAPTER IV 


boys’ love 

“^he boy is in love,” Cuthbert Mayne 
wrote to Father Peter. “He is in love 
and I hear of nothing else all day. Such in- 
genuousness was never known in an English- 
bred youth. The passion dissimulates itself: 
is an ideal thing : it gives me no grave concern. 
The lady is as much out of his reach as your 
illustrious niece, whom he adores in quite a 
different way and for whom he is prepared to 
do battle as loyally as any Fiirstenburgher if 
she should need it, which Heaven forefend. 
The lady is thirty years of age — very beautiful 
and very feminine, though for some reason 
she would like to be a man. But she is as good 
as married to Lord Halstead, who will keep 
her within bounds. She is very safe, my 
friend. The boy, who is more ardent than 
young England — to be sure he is half a Celt — 
has brought his calf-love to the safest possible 
shrine. But it troubles me, my friend. What 
61 


62 Boys’ Love 

is to happen when Pat has a serious affair of 
the heart?” 

Father Peter, picking the late September 
roses, the waning sweet peas in his little gar- 
den for the church, mused over the contents 
of this letter. He talked to Mousquetaire — 
the latest Mousquetaire, who followed him 
from bush to bush. 

“It would have been very well, see you, 
Mousquetaire,” said Father Peter, talking to 
the dog in the way which made Miss Fitt, his 
housekeeper, think of “the Father” as just a 
little mad — “if that boy, so dear, had chosen 
the life of the priest. It was not to be, though 
to him the words of St. Gregory the Great, 
‘Non Angli, sed Angeli,’ might well apply. 
Poor boy — there will be trouble for him, I fear. 
He will need prayers, this little Pat of ours, 
and we will need wise counsel.” 

Mousquetaire, being used to Father Peter’s 
confidences, merely wagged his tail as though 
to say he quite agreed. 

Pat meanwhile had no cloud on his horizon. 
He was in the full rapture of first love. His 


Boys’ Love 


63 


lady was kind with a full kindness that gave 
him hardly any need for tremors, for chills. 

There were some people who held that Miss 
Markham was cold, that she looked upon men 
as a means to a political end, that the woman in 
her was not awakened. She was Pat’s Egeria. 
He sat at her feet in the beautiful rooms at 
Broom Hall, in the library, which she affected 
most of all, which made her the finest back- 
ground, with her filleted hair, her sweeping 
garments, the solemn air of majestic yet soft 
beauty which made her like a daughter of the 
Gods. The library at Broom Hall, its light 
tempered of a summer’s day by the dimness 
and shadows and gold-frettedness of the rich 
room, by the colored lozenges in the arched 
windows, by the green of leaves and lawn with- 
out which showed vividly emerald above or be- 
low an open window, suited its mistress. Seated 
there, with her great Newfoundland, Max, 
resting his head on a trailing skirt, Miss Mark- 
ham was a subject for the great portrait 
painters. Whatever she did she made pictures. 
Her clearly tinted pale face, her beautiful 
brows under the masses of night-black hair, the 


64 


Boys’ Love 


steadfastness of her eyes, the grave and sweet 
composure of her lips ; there were people who 
thought she was conscious of these things, that 
her accessories were planned to frame them to 
the best possible advantage. They did not 
know her real simplicity who so misjudged 
her. No wonder that Pat was dazzled and 
succumbed. 

Lord Halstead made way for him smilingly, 
as he had made way before for boys who had 
fallen in love with Di. He was at Miss Mark- 
ham’s beck and call when she wanted him. 
When she did not seem to want him he would 
step out, showing neither anxiety nor jealousy. 
Some people thought that this behavior on 
Lord Halstead’s part signified indifference: 
others that he was so confident of his own 
place with Miss Markham as to have no fear 
of rivals. Mrs. Wynne, who had known him 
from babyhood, was perhaps nearest the mark. 

“Poor Guy,” she would say. She had not 
given up calling him by the name by which 
she had first known him. “Poor Guy. He is 
too chivalrous. He will give that foolish girl 
the full length of her tether. I hope it won’t 


Boys ’ Love 


65 


be disastrous. If only men would learn — the 
nice men — that the old custom of marriage by 
capture has yet a fascination for the female 
heart.” 

They were at one, Miss Markham and Pat, 
in their passion for England, her power and 
her glory, of the spiritual kingdom as much as 
the temporal. Above her desk in the library 
Miss Markham had set up an illuminated 
scroll which had fascinated Pat at his first 
sight of it; now that he had it by heart he 
hummed to himself as he rode about the lanes 
amid the dark and brooding majesty of the late 
summer trees. 

“I will not cease from mental fight, 

Nor shall my sword rust in my hand 

Till I have built Jerusalem 

In England’s green and pleasant land.” 
The text was under the St. George of Dona- 
tello, whose eager face, with an expression not 
so unlike Pat’s own, gazed out from a dark 
background of panelled wall. 

Pat was oddly uneducated on the English 
side of him. There was the whole wonderful 
realm of English literature to be conquered: 


66 


Boys’ Love 


and Miss Markham, despite her multifarious 
occupations, took Pat’s education eagerly in 
hand. 

Lord Halstead, coming one day, and enter- 
ing the library uninvited as was his wont, found 
Pat reading poetry to Miss Markham. He 
caught a few words while he stood a second or 
two unnoticed in the doorway. It was a 
sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney’s — Astrophal to 
Stella — and Pat, who had been learning fast, 
did no injustice to the high passion of the 
words. 

He was an apt pupil. He learned as he was 
bidden, read as he was bidden. 

He found that he had so much time on his 
hands that he was able, willing, eager to be- 
come a sort of unpaid secretary to Diana 
Markham. Her friends, who saw too little of 
her because she gave to the public much that 
was meant for them, had often urged upon her 
to have a secretary. Various great ladies in 
London had even found and sent down the 
ideal secretary only to have him or her returned 
upon their hands. The secretaries lacked in- 
telligence, Miss Markham complained. She 


Boys* Love 


67 


had found it necessary to have a companion 
because it left her freer to entertain whom she 
would. She had chosen an elderly lady, who 
was no earthly use to her except as a figure- 
head, who lived a life of luxurious idleness at 
Miss Markham’s expense, and, when she must 
be doing, contented herself with the most use- 
less employments. 

According to those who did not like Miss 
Markham, Mrs. Frith’s qualification for her 
post was that she knew how to efface herself. 
It was quite true that she had learnt very 
quickly not to ask her employer for employ- 
ment, but to occupy herself in her own way. 
Beyond the fact that she was not much needed, 
and a certain aloofness in Miss Markham’s 
beautiful eyes, Mrs. Frith was lapped in kind- 
ness, which she repaid by a boundless devotion 
and an anxiety to fall in with her employer’s 
will and wishes, which manifested itself by the 
watchfulness of the little delicately colored 
face whenever she was in Miss Markham’s 
presence. 

She was not required to be present during 
those hours which Miss Markham and Pat 


68 


Boys’ Love 


spent together in the library, or out-of-doors, 
under the great chestnut tree on the lawn, on 
the sultry mornings, although she came and 
went as she would. 

She had been snipping the dead leaves from 
the flowers in the conservatory like any early- 
Victorian heroine of a novel, the morning Lord 
Halstead came and went without seeing Miss 
Markham. She had met Lord Halstead in 
the hall, as she came along demurely with her 
little basket on her arm, and he had stopped 
to speak, to give her his message for Miss 
Markham. 

“They are reading poetry in there,” he said, 
indicating the library with a backward jerk of 
his head. “Noble Numbers. Sidney, I think. I 
recognized it. It seemed a pity to disturb 
them, if you will be so kind as to tell Miss 
Markham.” 

Mrs. Frith was a faithful soul. She had an 
immense admiration for Lord Halstead, whose 
maturity seemed to her much more worthy of 
consideration than Pat’s gold and white strip- 
ling graces. There had been something wry 
about Lord Halstead’s smile which hurt her to 


Boys 9 Love 


69 


see. For a day or two she blundered in and 
out of the library — there were a few showery 
days about that time which restricted their 
sittings to the house — in a way very unlike her 
usual discretion. Her fears were set at rest. 
They talked of things which no lovers in her 
experience had ever talked of. Diana was 
reading from a book for which she had an 
enthusiasm — “The Archdeacon’s Family,” the 
story of Piers Plowman, a passionately elo- 
quent history of the rise and fall, the oppres- 
sion, the betrayal, the spoliation of the English 
peasant. They were aflame with what they 
were reading — not for each other. Miss 
Markham found it consistent with an ardent 
imperialism to feel and profess something her 
high and dry Tory neighbors called Socialism. 
Mrs. Frith was satisfied. She wished she 
could have told Lord Halstead that they were 
only talking of some agricultural laborer or 
other. To be sure it was ridiculous. Why, 
Diana must be six or seven years older than the 
boy. She was not the kind of woman to fall 
in love with a boy, however attractive he might 
be. 


70 


Boys ’ Love 


Meanwhile the ardor grew in Pat’s blue 
eyes. He faltered sometimes when he spoke 
to Miss Markham. The passion trembled in 
his voice as he read poetry aloud. When she 
sat and played at the organ, which took up one 
whole end of the library, his rapt face would 
have betrayed him to any one. 

Only Miss Markham’s curious simplicity, 
which Mrs. Wynne had called the most lov- 
able thing about her, prevented her seeing the 
thing that was going to happen. She had been 
accustomed to admiration and adoration all her 
days. Somehow, her remoteness had often 
kept these things, from becoming passions. 
Miss Markham’s lofty kindness to the boys 
who were on the way to love her had acted more 
effectually as a deterrent than if she had been 
unkind. They had adored her still, and had 
gone on their way and fallen in love with mere 
earthly goddesses. 

But with Pat it was different. Pat had 
something of the passion of the South. His 
golden fairness was of the South rather than of 
the pale North. 


Boys’ Love 


71 


They had reached Browning by this time. 
Miss Markham was working an altar frontal — 
she was oddly, unexpectedly orthodox — copy- 
ing some wonderful Venetian lace. She had 
hardly noticed, sitting there in her untroubled 
beauty, how Pat’s voice had trembled over 
“Too Late”. 

“Shall I go on?” he asked. 

“Yes, please. You and I are the only peo- 
ple in all this country round about who read 
or want to read Browning.” 

“He is wonderful,” said Pat. “I don’t 
know that he isn’t best of all — to me.” 

If she had been observant she would have 
seen that Pat was pale. It was a very warm 
day outside. The heat and the activity of the 
gnats had driven them within. Honeysuckle 
clustered about the open windows and incensed 
the long room. The rich fragrance of it was 
blown against Pat’s face as the south wind 
came in, fluttering the papers on the table. 

“She should never have looked at me 
If she meant I should not love her.” 

Pat began the poem in a voice of passionate 
protest. Her long, delicate hands moving 


72 


Boys’ Love 


over the lace came between him and the page. 
How beautiful were her wrists, half-showing 
from the lace of her sleeve. He looked no 
higher than her hands and the girdle of ham- 
mered silver encrusted with stones that held her 
cool dress of sea-green linen. 

“She should never have looked at me 
If she meant I should not love her.” 

Down went Pat on his knees and hid his face 
in the hem of Egeria’s skirt. She stood up, 
looking a little frightened, and Pat scrambled 
to his feet, flushed and ashamed, but with a 
light in his eyes as they met hers. 

“I can’t help it, dearest,” he said. “Of 
course you wouldn’t look at me. But I’m 
yours to do what you will with, your slave all 
the days of my life.” 

A sense of Pat’s extraordinary comeliness 
struck her. Her young lover ! Why, any 
woman must be tender to a boy like Pat. Of 
course it was out of the question. Pat was a 
baby as compared with her. Still — she was 
not altogether displeased that her disciple had 
taken the common human way — only it must 


Boys 9 Love 


73 


be repressed in him, else what would become 
of their happy intercourse? 

It is not easy to escape the conventional al- 
together. Miss Markham acted like the her- 
oine of a hundred plays and novels as she 
answered Pat. 

“You must never speak of this again,” she 
said — “if we are to remain friends. I am ever 
so much older than you. You fancy you are 
dreadfully in love with me — but. ...” 

“I don’t fancy it,” said Pat, boldly. “I love 
you. I don’t expect you to pick up my love, 
but it is at your feet all the same, to tread on 
if you will. I wish I could do something for 
you — save you from some peril; not that I 
want you to be in peril — die for you, if I 
might.” 

It was the vein of romance in Pat which had 
animated his devotion to the Princess Henriet- 
ta of Fiirstenburg, with whom, however, he 
was not in love. The Princess, who was quite 
plain, a plump, golden-haired German, had 
been pleased by Pat’s rhapsodies; and as a 
result the discreet Princess Mathilde had dis- 


74 


Boys’ Love 


covered that it was time for Pat’s exile to be 
at an end. 

For a moment Miss Markham felt as though 
she were one of those ladies of history, of 
poetry, to whom such romantic and selfless 
love was offered. If Pat had asked anything 
in return she was not sure that she would not 
have been repelled. Pat only asked to die for 
her, to leave his love at her feet, to be trodden 
on if she would. Boys’ love — the sweeter for 
being bruised. It appealed to the imagination 
in Diana Markham. 

She put out a beautiful hand. 

“I don’t want to lose my friend, my com- 
rade,” she said. “I want to keep him. But 
there must be no more of this.” 

“I didn’t mean to say anything,” said Pat — 
4 ‘but it was — I don’t know what it was. You 
should not be so beautiful, Princess. There — 
that is the last of it. I won’t forget again.” 

His kiss fell on her hand, tender, reverent. 
Luckily he did not see Miss Markham’s eyes, 
else he might have forgotten again. 


CHAPTER V 

THE CRICKET MATCH 

*Jt was all very well to talk of forgetting 
Pat’s indiscretion. A little conscious- 
ness had crept into their intercourse, which 
could not well be removed. There was always 
something to disturb Pat. His loyal young 
lips might be closed; but what was to prevent 
the flush, the stammering speech, the ardor of 
his eyes? 

They read no more poetry. Pat was too 
apt to apply the poetry. If Miss Markham 
had been a wiser woman she would have cur- 
tailed Pat’s visits. She was too proud to make 
any difference, or so she assured herself. He 
came and went just as he had been in the habit 
of doing. He still fetched and carried for her. 
His education still went on. It was Green’s 
“History of the English People” now. Safety 
lay that way. Miss Markham kept her com- 
rade in his place — all the time with a sense, not 
unpleasant, of treading on thin ice. 

75 


76 


The Cricket Match 


Things might have gone all right if Lord 
Halstead had not for half an hour or so for- 
gotten to be the cheerful philosopher. He had 
been disturbed by a report which had reached 
him, or rather by the manner in which it had 
been conveyed. 

“Come over here, my dear man,” said old 
Lady Caroline Frayne, summoning Halstead 
to her side at the last cricket match of the 
season on the village green. 

He had gone quite willingly. Lady Caro- 
line was always amusing, if malicious. With 
her black eyes and white hair, her wrinkles, 
her hooked nose, her diminutive size and the 
crook on which she leant, Lady Caroline was 
very like a witch. She had discovered that 
fact for herself and had blunted the arrows of 
malice by being the first to mention it. 

“Come over here and tell me about Di. 
What’s this I hear about her and the beautiful 
youth they call Pat? And what do you mean 
by it? I hear he’s always in Di’s pocket. She 
oughtn’t to keep him in her pocket if she means 
nothing. People will talk — even of Di. And 


The Cricket Match 


77 


you, my dear Halstead — are you still un- 
ready?” 

Perhaps she meant to goad him for his good. 
Halstead had a way with old ladies. He never 
seemed to know a woman’s age, a thing which 
Lady Caroline appreciated, else she would 
have been unlike every other woman in the 
world. 

Halstead went away inwardly fuming. He 
would have denied furiously that he was 
jealous. The thing that perturbed him was 
that any one should have dared to talk about 
Di. He had been setting Di on a pedestal like 
any foolish boy all these years, while he pre- 
tended to laugh. It had never occurred to him 
that Di could not do what she pleased without 
people talking. Talk! How he loathed the 
thing. He was not at all in a judicial frame 
of mind as he considered the possible people 
who had talked about Di. He even applied 
to his friend, Lady Caroline, the one epithet 
she could not have forgiven since it commented 
on her age. 

Time was when he had captained the cricket 
team. He had resigned his place of late years 


78 


The Cricket Match 


to a younger man. He had no desire to be a 
veteran among the boys. 

The village green made a pretty picture with 
the houses dotting it round, the woods and the 
hill beyond, the white-clad figures of the play- 
ers, the white tent at the far end where Miss 
Markham distributed tea in the interval. 

Usually he would have been content to lie 
on the grass by Lady Caroline’s chair watch- 
ing the cricket and listening with a lazy en- 
joyment to her Ladyship’s comments on the 
world in general. Now, he lifted his hat and 
strolled away from her, with an outward ap- 
pearance of lazy contentment, but inwardly in 
a whirlwind of indignation. How dared they 
talk about Di? And — his anger took another 
turn — what did the young fool mean? What 
was Di about to have him “in her pocket” — 
detestable phrase as applied to Di — and an- 
other man. 

A good many people would have arrested 
his Lordship’s easy saunter, but he did not 
mean to be arrested. He simply ignored the 
many bright eyes that looked towards him, the 


The Cricket Match 


79 


smiles of the dowagers, the greeting of the 
men. 

He left the fine folk, where they sat in their 
chairs or their carriages at the end of the green 
and walked along behind the backs of the 
simple spectators stopping now and again for 
a word with one or another. He was very 
popular with the simpler people. 

He had been leaning a moment with his back 
against a tree hearing about George Pegg’s 
Yorkshire boar, its pedigree, weight and 
prospective price, when a tepid clapping an- 
nounced that somebody had gone out for his 
third ball. 

A heartier clapping announced a new play- 
er. Lord Halstead turned away from George 
Pegg and the Yorkshire boar and glanced 
that way. Pat was the new player. His 
slender young figure, white against a back- 
ground of dark green, had a flame-like sug- 
gestion of eagerness and grace. Lord Hal- 
stead frowned. 

“He do make a very pretty cricketer, the 
young gentleman from Grayes,” said George 
Pegg, who was landlord of the Duke’s Arms 


80 


The Cricket Match 


at Saxham. “He hev come on wonderful. 
Ah — well pla-a-yed!” Mr. P egg broke out in 
a vigorous roar. “He be very active,” he went 
on. “You ’n me — we wouldn’t have no chance 
with the like of him.” 

Lord Halstead’s sense of humor was in 
abeyance. George Pegg weighed eighteen 
stone and was shaped like one of his own 
barrels. Another time he would have been 
amused. Now his smile was rather a sour one. 

“A good thing, too,” went on George Pegg, 
“as Mr. Mayne have taken Grayes. It don’t 
do to leave a big house like that standin’ idle 
too long. Your Lordship agrees with me? 
Mr. Mayne now — he is an old gentleman — 
don’t come out even to go to Church. And he 
isn’t a London gentleman either.” 

“He’s something of an invalid,” said Lord 
Halstead, “and a great bookworm. But very 
agreeable when you meet him.” 

“Aye, so I’ve ’eard, so I’ve ’eard,” said 
George Pegg, and he heaved a sigh. “Worms 
ain’t no good to man nor beast,” he said. “I’ve 
a ’orse laid by with ’em and he’s as thin as thin. 
’Is vittles don’t do ’im no good. I’m sorry 


The Cricket Match 


81 


for the poor gentleman. But — a quare thing 
’appened no longer ago than last Friday. Mr, 
Mayne was out driving in a closed carriage, 
for all it were beautiful weather and he called 
at our ’ouse for a parcel o’ books wot came by 
the carrier. There was a man ’aving a pot o' 
ale and some bread-and-cheese in the parlor and 

’e says to my Missus — Tf that ain’t Mr. ’ 

My missus can’t remember wot name it was 
for the life of ’er, but it weren’t Mayne. 
‘That’s Mr. Mayne of Grayes,’ she says. ‘That 
ain’t Mr. Mayne,’ ’e says, ‘seein’ as ’ow my 

own sister were ’ousemaid at ’ There 

again! My missus ’as a ’ead and so ’as a pin. 
That name slipped clear out of her mind as 
well as t’other. She likes a gossip as well as 
any one, but she were called away to serve 
Lady Frayne’s coachman and w’en she come 
back that feller ’e’d gone, leaving ’is seven- 
pence on the table. She were disappointed.” 

Lord Halstead had listened to this recital 
with but half his ears. He was watching Pat’s 
figure in the distance, in a medley of emotions. 
There was something ridiculously young about 


82 


The Cricket Match 


Pat. His manner to Lord Halstead when 
they met had been one of deference. 

He went back to the tent, and for a wonder 
found Diana alone. She was sitting in front 
of the tent, a little shaded from the other 
spectators by the projecting flap. As he came 
in quietly, making his way between the tea 
tables, he saw that she was sitting in a pensive 
attitude, leaning forward in her low chair, her 
cheek propped on her hand. He had time to 
think that her face was pale under the masses 
of her hair before she observed him. 

He drew a chair beside hers. She looked at 
him in a startled way, as though he had in- 
terrupted a train of thought she would not 
have discovered. It was surely a new thing in 
him to imagine such a mood in her. Their 
relations had always been so uncomplicated. 

“Are you proud of your protege ?” he asked 
in his deliberate slow speech. “He is doing 
very well, Di.” 

“When one takes to cricket as a profession 
of faith,” she began — 

“Ah — his passion is to be English. Why 


The_ Cricket Match 


83 


don’t you tell him, Di, that he is all that is 
un-English?” 

“Un-English!” she repeated and the tone 
was indignant. 

“I did not intend it in an uncomplimentary 
sense. We are a stolid people. Mr. Patrick 
Mayne will never achieve stolidity — I grant 
you the more charming qualities which are not 
English.” 

Surely the very poison of jealousy was tor- 
menting him. The sight of the young figure 
in the sunlight made him middle-aged and 
loathing his age. 

“You are hard on us,” she said. 

“Oh — you Di! I talked of us in the lump, 
not in the fine race exceptions.” 

His voice suddenly changed — came out of 
its easy drawl. He had always been so good- 
humored. Now something stung and pricked 
him out of his good humor. 

“Are you quite fair to the boy, Di?” he 
asked. 

The rustic crowd shouted. Pat had been in 
a good while. He had just made his fifty. 
Sitting within the flap of the tent, facing the 


84 


The Cricket Match 


pitch, they were in a curious seclusion, seeing 
that just around the corner of the tent there 
was the elite of Saxham. 

4 ‘Why not?” 

She looked down at her ungloved hands 
lying in her lap, hands which looked as though 
they ought always to be occupied with beauti- 
ful things. 

There was something electrical between 
them. If he had followed his impulse — if he 
had reached out and taken the beautiful hand 
and told her that the reason why not — because 
he forbade her, because she had been always 
his even if she had not known it, being too busy 
with other things ; if he had spoken the words 
that were on his lips, had said he was tired 
waiting for her while she played at less serious 
things than life, she would have yielded to 
him. 

Unfortunately he did not follow his im- 
pulse. Instead he blundered. He was sore 
with the feeling of his middle age upon him, 
while Pat ran up the score, immortally young 
in the sunlight. 


The Cricket Match 


85 


You admit him too much to your intimacy, 
Di,” he said sharply. “You know he’s in love 
with you. Whether you’re in love with him 
I do not know. Only I know that you should 
send him about his business if you don’t mean 
to marry him.” 

The words were harshly, almost gratingly, 
spoken. Miss Markham was shocked, hurt, 
angry. 

“You are not above the laws, Di, though you 
hold yourself above them. None of us are 
above the laws. People will talk.” 

The color swept Miss Markham’s face from 
brow to chin. Suddenly her beauty was 
stormy. Her eyes sent indignant lightnings 
upon the good friend to wither him. 

Some one came through the opening of the 
tent at the back — only Miss Markham’s but- 
ler, Cobb. The interval was approaching. 
Cobb lit the spirit lamps under the urns, began 
unpacking the hampers that stood under the 
tables. Moving about in his quiet well-trained 
way, Cobb seemed as unaware of their presence 
as they of his. Max, disturbed in his place 


86 


The Cricket Match 


under the table, came out into the open and 
stretched himself at his mistress’s feet. 

He was a welcome diversion, as a dog often 
is. Halstead stooped and stroked him, and 
the dog looked at him with lazy affection as an 
established friend. Halstead talked to the dog. 
Diana was silent. She was not the person to 
pretend to talk in order to cover up things be- 
cause a servant was present. Fortunately 
Max did not share his mistress’s displeasure 
against the old friend. 

Presently Pat was out and there was the 
interval for tea. He appeared after a little 
while in the tent with a gray coat over his flan- 
nels. In the lapel of it there was a rose. The 
rose seemed to Halstead’s gloomy fancy the 
one thing needful to complete Pat’s radiance 
of youth. 

The Saxham ladies were ready to make 
much of Pat, who handed the tea and the other 
good things indefatigably. Halstead sat still 
and allowed himself to be waited upon, until 
he found Mrs. Wynne and establishing her in 
a shady corner outside the tent waited on her 
assiduously. Diana did the foolish thing that 


The Cricket Match 


87 


many a woman has done before her — she fav- 
ored Pat to punish Halstead. It only bewil- 
dered Pat with delight. Upon Halstead it had 
no obvious effect. 

Only Mrs. Wynne, who loved Halstead like 
a son, knew that he was ill at ease. 


CHAPTER VI 

NEW FRIENDS 


£)at was at Broom Hall the day the 
Harlands returned Miss Markham’s 
call. There was Mrs. Harland and there was 
Miss Harland whom her mother called Kitty: 
and they came in the very latest thing in 
motor-cars, which was not very late: but 
motor-cars were yet enough of a novelty to 
cause something of a sensation in Saxham. 

Mrs. Harland was a very comfortable look- 
ing and comely matron, with a sunburnt look 
of the open air and a breezy manner. Kitty 
sat in her mother’s shadow and was quiet, only 
admiring Max immensely and making friends 
with him, now and again sending a dazzled 
look towards Miss Markham. 

It was autumn by this time and fires of 
wood spluttered and sang in the great open 
fire-places at Broom Hall. Outside the trees 
were in all shades of tawny and gold and 
amber, with now and again a vivid splash of 
scarlet. Every breath of wind brought the 


New Friends 


89 


leaves down to carpet the gardens with gold. 
There was a strange honey-colored light in the 
woods : and when the sun shone, throwing the 
shadows of dancing branches on the golden 
carpet, the world was a fairy place, suddenly 
turned to gold. 

Kitty Harland hardly spoke at all. When 
she did it was in a low voice of peculiar soft- 
ness. She looked shy, and when Pat tried to 
talk to her she answered almost in a whisper. 

“What a plain child!” said Diana Markham 
after they had gone. 

“Plain!” repeated Pat, with a startled air: 
“do you think so? Do you know I had been 
thinking her beautiful?” 

Something had happened of late to disturb 
Diana’s placidity. That remark about Kitty 
Harland’s plainness was a part of it. She had 
always been generous to other women if it 
could be called generosity, seeing that she had 
never had any conscious need to be generous. 
A certain unconsciousness of her own beauty 
as a birthright, something too customary to be 
felt, went side by side in her with an apparent 
unconsciousness of lack of beauty in other 


90 


New Friends 


women. It was not a plain face that called 
for her disapproval: and her disapproval was 
a very positive thing when it was once awak- 
ened. 

‘‘Beautiful !” she repeated scornfully, while 
Pat stood amazed at a tantrum in his goddess. 
“That gawky child — with her brick-dust com- 
plexion, her tow-colored hair, her squat nose, 
her wide mouth. Her arms are too long for 
her body. I concede to you that her eyes are 
very blue and her teeth good. Nothing else.” 

“Can’t you feel it?” Pat asked in a certain 
simple wonder. “Of course it is all true what 
you say. Yet she is beautiful. She has a 
wild kind of grace. There is something fawn- 
like about her.” 

A day or two later Pat came upon Mrs. 
Harland and her daughter in a narrow lane. 
They were driving a pair of Shetlands and 
were in difficulties, for they had come up 
against a heavy farm- wagon and the Shet- 
lands refused to back. Kitty Harland was 
driving and her mother’s composed air while 
the little Shetlands reared and pranced filled 
Pat with an amused admiration. 


New Friends 


91 


He pulled the little creatures down on their 
four feet again. 

“Beauty rolls and Puck rears,” Kitty Har- 
land called to him in her soft voice. “If they 
hadn’t kicking straps on they’d kick the car- 
riage to pieces. Aren’t they darlings? Now 
if we could only persuade them to move. 
They can be suddenly reasonable in a most 
amazing way.” 

She sprang out and came to Pat’s side. 
Beauty at once put her head into Miss Har- 
land’s coat-pocket looking for sugar which she 
found and crunched with great satisfaction. 
Puck was making a similar search about Pat, 
smelling all over his hands, thrusting his head 
within Pat’s coat. 

After a certain amount of persuasion the 
Shetlands, having resisted furiously at first, 
suddenly became reasonable and backed with 
the utmost docility — stepping into a gateway 
while the wagon rolled on its journey. 

“Aren’t two a little awkward in a narrow 
lane?” Pat asked. 

“We’re obliged to drive the two,” Miss 
Harland answered, her shy eyes sparkling in 


92 


New Friends 


the shadow of her big hat. “You see Beauty 
can’t very well roll if Puck rears: and it 
brings Puck to earth when Beauty manifests 
an intention of rolling.” 

“Do you think it quite safe to drive them?” 
Pat asked anxiously. “Aren’t they easily 
frightened?” 

“They’re very easily frightened,” the young 
lady replied. “But they quiet down very 
soon. They have several differences of opin- 
ion. Puck always wants to race a motor-car 
and Beauty shies into the hedge at the first 
suspicion of one. But at present they’re more 
frightened of country objects than anything 
else. There too they differ. Beauty’s terri- 
fied of hens and Puck despises hens because he 
once lived down a mews where hens were kept. 
Puck can’t endure sheep but likes pigs : 
whereas Beauty doesn’t mind sheep in the 
least and always quakes when she sees a pig.” 

Miss Harland’s wide brown hat had a touch 
of pink in it. She kept looking down while 
she talked to Pat. Only now and again he 
caught a glimpse of the eyes darkly blue, with 


New Friends 


93 


dark lashes in piquant contrast to the heavy 
uncurling pale hair. 

“Kitty can drive anything,” Mrs. Harland 
said reassuringly. “She has always been used 
to horses. Her father is just the same. He 
always prefers an unbroken horse.” 

“Mamma knows she is quite safe with me,” 
Miss Harland said, again lowering her head 
till only the broad sweep of her hat and an out- 
line of cheek and chin were visible. 

“Please, let me walk with you to the end of 
the lane,” Pat entreated. “Perhaps you don’t 
know this lane. It narrows like a bottle neck. 
You’ll barely scrape through. Unless indeed 
you’d go back the way you came.” 

But the ladies were not prepared to go back 
the way they came. They did not at all object 
to Pat’s walking with them, however. He and 
Miss Harland walked along side by side while 
Mrs. Harland held the reins loosely. She left 
the Shetlands to her daughter, she explained, 
while Kitty added from under the shadow of 
her hat that Mamma was much too precious 
to be trusted with Beauty and Puck without 
her daughter’s supervision. 


94 


New Friends 


When they had reached the main road Mrs. 
Harland suggested that Pat should go home 
with them to the Chase for lunch. They were 
within a very short distance of their own gates. 

“We are the most unconventional people,” 
Mrs. Harland said, apologetically. “I sup- 
pose there ought to be an interchange of calls 
— but — we have disregarded the convenances 
so long that we cannot begin to regard them 
now.” 

“I do the calling for my uncle,” Pat put in 
eagerly. “If I might come on with you and 
make the call. He’s rather an invalid. To- 
day he is gone over to the sale of books at 
Wivelstow. He has a very fine library and 
his only recreation is in adding to it. I’m the 
society one.” 

“Then you needn’t hurry back,” Miss Har- 
land said hospitably. “Get in. There’s more 
room than you think, if only you can manage 
to stow away your legs comfortably.” 

Pat got into the little seat facing the ladies. 
They opened their rug over his knees. He 
tucked away his long legs as best he could. 
His knees were nearly up to his chin but he 


New Friends 


95 


did not complain. The easy hospitality was 
very pleasant to Pat, who found the English 
country ways somewhat narrowly conven- 
tional. He was always breaking the rules and 
was only forgiven because of his ignorance. 

He liked Mrs. Harland’s sunburnt skin 
and kind, honest expression. Kitty Harland 
appealed to him as something very young. 
She was as a matter of fact twenty to Pat’s 
twenty-four: but at twenty-four a boy’s love 
is seldom attracted by a girl younger than 
himself. Pat, head over ears in love with 
Diana Markham, was attracted by Kitty as by 
a child. The shy elusiveness of her looks, her 
soft voice, her almost boyish gracefulness did 
not stir Pat’s pulses in the least. But she was 
unusual and pleasant all the same. 

Pat found Major Harland quite as uncon- 
ventional as his family. He came in to lunch 
in an old coat of homespuns which was well 
seasoned by the weather. With it he wore 
riding breeches and leggings and he had the 
bandy legs of a man who has been astride of a 
horse most of his days. He too had a weather- 
beaten face and eyes deeply sunken in their 


96 


New Friends 


sockets as though they had been narrowed 
against the wind and the weather. 

There was an excellent lunch— not at all the 
conventional English lunch, but with certain 
light foreign dishes which appealed to Pat, 
who had grown rather tired of English cook- 
ing. There was a white, sparkling wine on 
the table, which Major Harland said was good 
for ladies, recommending his own drink, 
whiskey and water to Pat, who, however, pre- 
ferred the wine. The Major had given Pat 
a kindly welcome with the air of its being quite 
a usual occurrence to find an absolutely strange 
young man at his luncheon-table. 

“I called to see your uncle this morning, 
Mr. Mayne,” he said. “It is about an under- 
gardener who has been at Grayes and wants 
to come to me. I was unfortunate in finding 
him out.” 

“He will write,” said Pat. “If you will tell 
me the man’s name. ...” 

They were waited on at table by a man with 
whom the Major kept up a running flow of 
talk. He joined in the conversation in a 
broad Hibernian brogue, whenever he had 


New Friends 


97 


anything to contribute to it : and he had a way 
of putting his hand over his mouth when a joke 
was made which appealed irresistibly to Pat’s 
sense of humor. 

‘‘I’ll have more of that vol-au-vent ” the 
Major said. “Where’s the vol-au-vent gone 
to, Brady? You haven’t sent it down?” 

“Sure it wouldn’t be good for you. Major. 
The last time you had it you was terribly upset 
in the temper the next day.” 

“No matter whether I was or not. Bring 
the vol-au-vent at once.” 

“Besides it was all ate,” said Brady, in what 
was meant to be a whisper but was audible all 
round the table. 

Again he swooped on the port wine decanter 
as the Major was about to help himself. 

“It will destroy ye with the gout, so it will,” 
he said. 

“So it would,” said the Major pacifically. 
“I’m not the man I was. Do you remember 
the time when I could drink my bottle of 
champagne every night, with port to follow 
and a whiskey and soda to wind up?” 


98 


New Friends 


“An’ you used to read the Riot Act to the 
regiment next day? Aye indeed, sure I 
wouldn’t be forgettin’ it. Ye remember the 
mornin’. Major, you nearly broke my head 
with your boots.” 

Mrs. Harland and Kitty seemed to find 
nothing unusual in this subsidiary conversation, 
so presumably they were used to it. Mrs. Har- 
land mentioned that Brady had been her 
husband’s soldier servant and had saved him 
from being clawed to death by a tiger 
up-country in India. 

“He’s quite one of the family,” she said, 
with her kindly smile. “I don’t know how my 
husband would get on without Brady.” 

“I’ve tried to get on without him,” her hus- 
band responded, “but the scoundrel won’t go.” 

This was when Brady had retired, having 
left the coffee cups on the table — with a 
strange machine in which Mrs. Harland was 
now making the coffee and handing round 
cigars and cigarettes. 

Pat was somewhat amazed to find that both 
ladies helped themselves to cigarettes. More 
than that, they smoked them as though they 


New Friends 


99 


thoroughly enjoyed them. The sunshine was 
in the room by this time and its pale radiance 
fell on Kitty Harland’s head, about which the 
clouds of smoke floated till it had the delicate 
elusiveness of a silver-point drawing. She sat 
at the other side of the table from Pat, her 
head lifted, her eyes looking upward while she 
blew out the clouds of cigarette smoke from 
between her softly gathered lips. She seemed 
to have forgotten her shyness, as though the 
veil of smoke was something palpable. 

Pat glanced now and again at the graceful 
head on its milky young throat. The girl was 
certainly oddly attractive. Brick-dust com- 
plexion as Diana Markham had said, heavy 
dull, fair hair — as much silver as gold in it, 
perhaps with a greenish shade that suggested 
the straight heaviness of falling water. There 
was a young immaturity about her, a certain 
lankness, a squareness of shoulder, elbows 
showing sharp angles — and yet so graceful. 
Pat was answering Major Harland’s questions 
about his life in the German regiment of 
Cuirassiers. All the time his glances returned, 
oddly fascinated, to Kitty. 


100 


New Friends 


“She will do it,” said her father intercepting 
one of these glances. “She picked it up when 
we were in Russia. Her mother got the bad 
habit from me. We used to smoke together 
when we were boy and girl. What will Sax- 
ham think?” 

Pat hardly thought it mattered about what 
Saxham might think. He had acquired from 
Diana Markham a contempt for Saxham’s 
standards of which without her he would have 
been unaware. Saxham had a way of look- 
ing down on itself, which meant all the other 
people except the one who decried Saxham. 
Pat had taken its own word for it as well as 
Diana Markham’s. 

After lunch they went to see the stables. A 
rabble of dogs who had been lying in front 
of the dining-room fire preceded them with a 
babel of rejoicing. The dogs were all breeds 
and no breeds. 

“A disgraceful lot!” said Major Harland 
apologetically. “My wife never can resist a 
dog. She picks ’em up everywhere she goes. 
Look at that” — indicating a lanky thing with 
an enormous tail. “That’s Gyp. She calls 


New Friends 


101 


Gyp an Irish terrier. It’s a great offence to 
Brady.” 

“Gyp’s a darling,” said Kitty, “and you 
mustn’t say such things, Papa, for she knows 
every word you say: she’s so clever.” 

“Bedad then if she does,” said the Major, 
“she knows she’s a mongrel, so she won’t mind 
the truth being told.” 

There were half a dozen horses in the stables, 
besides the Shetlands, who had to be kept in 
box-stalls because they invariably managed to 
slip their collars. 

“I prefer an unbroken one,” the Major was 
saying. “When they get broken it’s time for 
me to part with them: and that’s a heart-break 
to me. Look at this beauty. I bought her at 
Cahirmee last July. She’ll carry Kitty this 
winter. Isn’t she pretty?” 

The mare was very pretty but very wild, 
putting her ears back and showing the whites 
of her eyes as they came near her. Pat was 
surprised and delighted at Kitty Harland’s 
way with the horses, how she approached the 
wildest of them and fondled them, taking their 


102 


New Friends 


heads in her arms and standing with her cheek 
against theirs. 

“Kit has a charm with horses,” her father 
said, with an air of pride. “If she was in Ire- 
land she’d be a Whisperer.” 

A diversion was created by the Irish mare 
aiming a vicious kick at Gyp, who was sniffing 
around her heels. Gyp, more frightened than 
hurt, made a terrific row about her injuries and 
Kitty ran and picked her up to carry her 
indoors to Mrs. Harland who was devoted to 
her, while Major Harland remarked easily 
that Colleen resented the slight on Ireland as 
much as Brady. 

Pat stayed till after tea and discovered on 
his homeward way that he had not been forlorn 
for Diana as he usually was out of her society. 
To be sure he had talked of her to Kitty Har- 
land walking by her side in the garden. She 
had conceived a young girl’s devotion to an 
older beautiful woman and was greedy for all 
Pat could tell her about the divinity. Pat was 
very willing to talk. Only once he was pulled 
up short by the remembrance of Diana’s curi- 


New Friends 


103 


ous rancor which still had power to hurt him, 
about Kitty’s looks. 

As he reached home, feeling warmed and 
pleased by the recent experience, he came up 
with his uncle’s carriage turning in at the 
white lawn gates of Grayes. He and Cuthbert 
Mayne went into the house together. On the 
hall table a card gleamed whitely. 

“Callers,” said Cuthbert Mayne, irritably. 
“I wish they would let me alone. Perhaps it’s 
for you, Pat.” 

Pat took up the card and held it to the light. 

“It’s Major Harland,” he said. “They’ve 
taken the Chase — very pleasant people.” 

“Major — Harland — did you say?” 

Pat was struck by something unusual in his 
uncle’s voice. He turned and looked at him 
in surprise. 

“Major — Harland — did you say? Where 
does the man come from? Where are my 
glasses?” 

“He was in a Hussar regiment. He men- 
tioned it to-day. But he’s given up soldiering 
a long time, I fancy. They’ve been traveling 
about. Delightful people. I’ve just come 


104 


New Friends 


from their house. He wanted to know about 
MacBean who was under-gardener here ” 

Cuthbert Mayne uttered a curious sound, 
between a groan and a snarl. 

“Confound him! I don’t want visitors,” he 
said. “I’m not very well, Pat. Give me an 

arm. The place was abominably crowded 

» 

Pat gave his arm to his uncle and helped 
him upstairs where he left him to the care of 
his valet. A little later a message came down- 
stairs that Mr. Mayne did not feel well 
enough to come down to dinner and would Pat 
kindly excuse him. 


CHAPTER VII 

FROM THE PAST 

©Something in the situation was grave 
enough to bring Cuthbert Mayne out of 
his retirement so far as to pay a visit to Father 
Peter. He was waiting in the little low- 
browed sitting-room when Father Peter trund- 
led his tricycle up to the door between the late 
rows of nasturtiums and the shabby sweet peas. 

“I’m so sorry you’d no one to welcome you,” 
he said, coming in and shaking hands with 
Cuthbert Mayne. “I had to see a bedridden 
old man at Saffron End. I hope Mousque- 
taire did the honors.” 

“He certainly shook hands with me when I 
came in,” Cuthbert Mayne replied with a 
smile which, although it only flickered across 
the weariness of his face and went out, indi- 
cated that there had been a time when he could 
be merry. 

“My housekeeper — I hope she offered you 
food,” Father Peter said, taking off the queer 
three-decker cape in which he traveled. “She 
105 


106 


From the Fast 


has instructions to offer my visitors food if i 
am not here to do it myself.” 

“Instructions which she interprets freely, I 
expect,” said Cuthbert Mayne, again with the 
flickering smile, “else your larder would be 
very bare.” 

“I have good friends who fill it, who supply 
all my necessities — you among them. You 
have not eaten, then? We shall have a meal 
together.” 

He rang the bell and gave his orders. 
“And how is Pat?” he asked when the woman 
had left the room. “Still in love?” 

“Pat is very well, and still in love. Pat has 
a host of friends. He is incessantly busy. 
He is very good in taking all the work of the 
place off my hands.” 

“Ah, you did not come so far to tell me 
that?” 

Any one who knew Father Peter well would 
have detected in his face a sense of guilt found 
out. So had he looked after he had given the 
last blankets from his bed in bitter winter 
weather when his housekeeper had discovered 
the fact. 


From the Fast 


107 


He wore an air of guilty expectancy as who 
should say that since the account had to be 
rendered, the sooner the better. He was pre- 
pared to defend himself. He had had nothing 
to do with Cuthbert Mayne’s fortuitous choice 
of Saxham as a place of residence. Mrs. 
Noyes had found a refuge there long before 
Cuthbert Mayne discovered Grayes and bought 
it. It would have been the greatest cruelty 
to have driven her forth. More, Father Peter 
was one who saw in the conjunction of these 
atoms the guiding Finger. Things had come 
so without any of them moving otherwise than 
blindly. Let the Finger set it right. 

Nevertheless he expected reproaches for his 
want of candor. He took snuff and passed 
the box to Cuthbert Mayne. He was pre- 
pared to defend himself — more, to refuse to 
see that Mrs. Noyes ought to be moved on. 
Whoever should leave Saxham she should not. 
She was atoning; if she could never atone to 
the dead, at least she was making life easier for 
a number of helpless and tortured bodies. He 
was prepared to be brave as a lion in Mrs. 
Noyes 5 defence. 


108 


From the Past 


“After all,” he said, “my friend,” and he 
threw his hands out with his characteristic 
gesture. “After all — with wealth you have 
the world before you: and Pat need not 
know.” 

“Need not know what?” asked Cuthbert 
Mayne staring. “I have told you nothing. 
Unless you are a seer, Father Peter! What 
is it that Pat need not know? And why 
should I have the world before me?” 

Father Peter blushed guiltily. Evidently 
he was on the wrong track. He was im- 
mensely relieved: still he didn’t quite know 
how to answer Cuthbert Mayne’s question. 

He temporized. 

“Pat’s love-affair,” he began. 

“Is safe enough. The best thing to happen 
to a boy of his age. She won’t marry him. 
She’s as good as married already. No; it isn’t 
that. Something much worse than that. 
Who do you suppose has turned up at Sax- 
ham? Moreover the boy’s fraternized with 
them but — Harland of all men in the world. 
Harland and Mrs. Harland, and a girl. A 


Frory, the Past 109 

little girl, I take it. They had no children in 
those days.” 

Father Peter closed his eyes. What did it 
mean — the converging atoms? Why should 
all these people whose lives were so inextric- 
ably mixed up be brought together in a little 
out-of-the-way corner of the world like Sax- 
ham? 

There was a diversion. Father Peter’s 
newest housekeeper stood in the doorway 
announcing lunch. She was a drab little 
spinster with a sanctimonious air. She kept 
her eyes down as she spoke. 

“A good creature, a good creature,” said 
Father Peter when she had left them together. 
“Miss Fitt left because of a . . . . difference of 
opinion about things. She took too much on 
herself. She didn’t like the children coming 
about her clean rooms, she said. They weren’t 
very clean, by the way. Now this poor 
woman is most zealous in distributing my 
charities. She never lets a tramp pass lest it 
should be a Holy Person in disguise. She can 
make an omelette — a very good omelette. 
Miss Fitt couldn’t make that. Also she can 


110 


From the Fast 


make very good coffee and dress a salad. She 
learnt in France. After all with an omelette, 
a salad and good coffee one needn’t starve. 
I hope you are enjoying yours.” 

Cuthbert Mayne heeded little what he ate: 
but he acknowledged that the omelette was 
good, passing on to things that interested him 
more. 

“Was there ever such infernal — ” he cor- 
rected himself hastily — “such ill-luck, as that 
the Harlands should settle down cheek by jowl 
with us? Am I to be uprooted at my age? 
When I have found a place to suit me? You 
don’t know how many places I saw before I 
found Grayes. I have been growing fond of 
the place — as fond as I could be of any place 
that was not Forest. Forest still leaves a 
wound. If it was any one else but the Har- 
lands — the Harlands of all people.” 

“My friend,” said Father Peter gently, 
“after all you go nowhere — you are a hermit, 
is it not so? You need not stir beyond your 
own park-walls for recreation and exercise. 
And — after the lapse of years. ...” 


From the Fast 


111 


“Oh, I know. I am greatly changed. A 
man does not suffer as I have suffered and 
not change. You think I could pass? Father 
P eter you are too polite to say so : but I know 
that I am changed out of all remembering. 
However it matters less that the Harlands and 
I did not meet. I was ill at the time of the 
trial. I am weary, I want rest. I have grown 
fond of Grayes. I don’t want to leave it till 
they carry me out.” 

“I should stay,” said Father Peter. “I 
should stay. Why — if they were to dis- 
cover — they would, from what one heard of 
them — they would — not betray you to the boy 
nor him to the world. They are good souls.” 

“They would not, if they had time to con- 
sider the matter. I have nothing against the 
Harlands. They, too, were victims. They 
came near to being most terribly wronged. 
You remember his cross-examination? Shame- 
ful! Terrible!” 

The veins stood out on Cuthbert Mayne’s 
forehead. “They behaved better than any- 
body could have expected. But I do not want 
their mercy. I want our paths to be separate. 


112 


From the Past 


And Pat — do you suppose they would admit 
Pat to the intimacy of their house if they 
knew?” 

He hardly meant it as a question, but the 
priest answered it as though he did. 

“Very probably, I should think. Poor 
lamb! Who would visit the sins of others on 
Pat?” 

Neither man seemed to see anything incon- 
gruous in the description of six-foot Pat as a 
poor lamb. In the priest’s thoughts of him he 
was just the golden-headed baby who had lain 
sleepily in Mary Evelyn’s cradling arms more 
than twenty years ago. 

“Pat is so absorbed in Miss Markham that 
he is not likely to spend much thought on the 
Harlands or much time with them.” 

There was a certain hopefulness in Cuthbert 
Mayne’s expression as he looked at Father 
Peter. It was good to have one professionally 
bound to secrecy on whom one could lay one’s 
burdens — whose advice one could accept with a 
sense of finality. Out of the fiery trial of long 
ago Cuthbert Mayne had come, spent, worsted, 
never to be the same man again. He sighed 


From the Past 


113 


as he heard the priest’s answer with a sense of 
relief that he need not give up Grayes as he had 
given up Forest. Indeed he might not find it 
so easy to give up Grayes. It is not so easy to 
shuffle off a place like Grayes once one has 
acquired it. 

Father Peter, the sense of the Finger still 
with him, answered with a confidence that 
shifted the responsibility which Cuthbert 
Mayne would have laid on his shoulder. 

“I think you may stay,” he said. 

“Harland has called on me. I found his card 
on the table when I came in last night. I hope 
I did not betray myself to Pat. Indeed I 
know I did not. He suspected nothing. He 
is very simple. I need not see Harland. I 
fulfil no social duties. Pat does all that for 
me.” 

“I should leave it to Pat ” 

Miss Haycock brought in the coffee, which 
smelt fragrant, and retired with her air of 
ostentatious humility. The conversation, inter- 
rupted by her entrance, went on again, taking 
a different turn. 


114 


From the Past 


“Miss Markham will not hurt Pat?” Father 
Peter asked with an anxious tenderness. 

“Not more than can be helped. We’ve all 
to go through it. It’s part of the training. 
You should have made him a priest. I wish 
you had made him a priest. The last Lutt- 
rell! What matter! Why, the last Luttrell 
for the matter of that is dead and gone.” 

“My friend, it does not rest with me to make 
priests,” Father Peter said: and went to the 
window to drop a rosy-cheeked apple into the 
outspread hands of an urchin who had stood 
tip-toe to look into the room. 

Neither Father Peter nor Cuthbert Mayne 
would have been less anxious about Pat if they 
could have known that that very afternoon 
found him again at the Chase. He was at 
somewhat of a loose end since Diana Mark- 
ham was in London for a few days. He had 
called to give Major Harland the character 
of the under-gardener. He was not at all 
sorry when the hospitable gentleman insisted 
on keeping him for tea. Mrs. Harland was 
out driving, but Kitty was at home in the morn- 
ing room. 


From the Past 


115 


Major Harland left the two young people 
together while he went round to the stables 
to see after his favorite mare’s galled shoulder. 

Contrary to all that Pat would have expected 
he found Kitty Harland doing needlework. 
There was a little heap in her lap of some gar- 
ment dainty and feminine. As she got up to 
shake hands with him it slid to the floor, and 
stooping to pick it up their hands met. 

They both laughed over the incident because 
they were young and cheerful. There was an 
old-fashioned work-table open by Kitty Har- 
land’s side. Pat sat down by it and eyed the 
contents with curiosity. Things feminine had 
the interest for him which they are apt to have 
for the young man brought up without a moth- 
er or sisters. He looked at the open work- 
table, with its tangle of colored silks, all its 
pretty things for which he had no name, the 
uses of which he could not imagine. Then he 
glanced back at Kitty sitting close to the win- 
dow to catch the light on her work. 

The pale light was cool on her silken hair. 
It was very fine and perfectly straight hair, 
but as she had twisted it in a thick coil at the 


116 


From the Past 


back of her head it had fallen into a sleek 
wave behind her ears; the depths of the wave 
were green as water — an odd suggestion for 
hair to give one. Kitty’s face was pink in 
the framing of the silver-gold hair. Her eyes, 
startlingly blue as she had looked up at him, 
were now swept by the dark lashes. 

The dogs scrambled off their various chairs 
and came and made a friendly circle in the 
bow- window. Kitty went on with her sewing, 
talking in the delightfully soft voice, now and 
again lifting her eyes to his for a moment. 

They talked of Diana Markham with whom 
Kitty was still in love. Pat forgot that Diana 
had been unlike herself when she had railed 
against Kitty. He was quite ready to talk 
of Diana to a sympathetic listener. Miss 
Markham must have been touched if she had 
heard these two simple young people discuss- 
ing her. 

While he talked Pat played with the con- 
tents of the work-table — lifting up one red 
satin lid after another to examine the strange 
things that lay beneath. 


From the Past 


117 


Kitty went on with her sewing, explaining 
to him what the things were as he brought them 
out. Now and again she bit off a thread with 
her little white teeth. There were circles of 
ivory and mother-of-pearl for winding silk 
upon: there were beaded needle cases, there 
were old tarnished thimbles bearing posies : “If 
you love me, be mine” and “Will you marry 
me?”: there were little waxen reels for the pur- 
pose of waxing threads, tape-measures, odds 
and ends of ribbon and lace — half a dozen sam- 
plers, part begun — all manner of quaint and 
delightful things. 

“It belonged to my great-grandmother,” 
Kitty explained: “then my grand-mother had 
it : and then Mamma : and now it has come down 
to me.” 

Pat discovered the secret of the lid that cov- 
ered the well of the table. He plunged his 
hands boldly in and brought up yet more 
pretty and quaint things. Apparently the 
work-table had been a receptacle for many 
other things than needlework. There were 
pretty brooches and buckles, a note-book, a set 


118 


From the Past 


of tablets, a pair of gloves, a fan, all manner of 
feminine odds and ends. 

After he had examined them curiously, lay- 
ing them down on the table beside him, he be- 
gan to put them back. When he came to the 
lid covering the well, turning it about he was 
aware of a little water-colored drawing of a 
house — a red house with a lake in front of it 
and a very green park with little woolly objects 
dotted about that might be sheep or deer. The 
little picture was niggling in execution and 
woolly in coloring. 

Pat held it to the light and read across the 
corner the inscription: “Forest, May 1879.” 

“Oh,” he said, “how odd! My uncle has a 
picture of this same place. It hangs in a cor- 
ner of his bedroom. How curious that you 
should have it too.” 

“That is Mamma’s,” said Kitty. “A place 
she knew when she was a girl. Why, here is 
Mamma. Mr. Mayne has been looking at 
your little painting. He thinks he has seen a 
picture of the same place.” 

“Very likely. It was a dear old house. 
Unfortunately, it came into a good deal of 


From the Past 


119 


prominence some years ago. Where is your 
father, Kitty ?” 

“After all,” said Pat, “perhaps it is not the 
same place that Uncle Cuthbert has a picture 
of, but it is very like. His is an old picture. 
It would be a hundred years earlier than this. 
I must ask Uncle Cuthbert about it.” 

Mrs. Harland looked at him with a startled 
air — opened her lips to speak and then closed 
them again. Who was it that Pat in his golden 
fairness resembled? It could not be. . . .But 
of course not. She was an unimaginative 
woman. There certainly had been a baby; it 
had not been much in evidence. She remem- 
bered the baby very well in the days follow- 
ing its birth; afterwards Milly had been too 
busy — races, Hurlingham, the river, foreign 
seas, Kursaals — how Milly had run the pace 
before the smash! Her own husband had car- 
ried her off after that ordeal — had kept her 
away till health and sanity were restored. Was 
it likely? She must ask Hugo if he had ever 
heard what became of the child. 

But after all — Hugo hated to talk of that 
time. Remembering how much he hated it his 


120 


From the Past 


wife spared to ask him any questions, and for- 
got in time her own momentary revelation of 
who Pat was like, as she forgot her wish that 
she could have looked after Milly’s poor little 
baby. After all it was so improbable as to be 
out of the question. 

A few weeks later something happened 
which brought it all back to her. 


CHAPTER VIII 

A GHOST 

^UQJhen the hunting season came round Ma- 
jor Harland was not to be found at home 
except in the evenings or the very early morn- 
ings. He hunted with two packs of hounds: 
and his wife would have had reasonable cause 
of complaint if she too had not been a hunts- 
woman. She contented herself with a couple 
of days’ hunting a week: and Kitty went out 
with her father and Pat Mayne once or twice 
a week. 

Pat’s friendship with the Harlands had 
thriven and grown during the fortnight or so 
of Diana Markham’s absence. Kitty and Pat 
were quite at home with each other now, on 
quite easy comradely terms. Only now and 
again Kitty would have her moments of a be- 
wildering feminine shyness which were all that 
was needed to recall to Pat that she was not a 
delightful boy. 

Nothing could have afforded greater chances 
of intimacy than those hunting mornings and 
121 


122 


A Ghost 


evenings. Neither Major nor Mrs. Harland 
were sticklers for the proprieties. Perhaps 
Pat’s fair and open face carried his passport 
with it. Anyhow the couple, who were no less 
lovers because they had a grown-up daughter, 
were quite content to leave Kitty in Pat’s 
charge, to ride along side by side to meet while 
Kitty and Pat cantered in front: to let Pat 
take care of Kitty in the field so far as the 
young lady needed or would accept caring for: 
to leave them to ride home together in the after- 
noon dusk. Delightful days, gray and mild, 
with the autumn foliage yet hanging on the 
thinning boughs and the delicious coolness of 
autumn in the air, days of intense blue shadow 
under the boughs and in the distances: when 
the threshing mills called from one hidden 
farm to another: when the smoke from the 
cottage eaves hung motionless in the boughs 
without wind enough to carry it away. 

Kitty and Pat would arrive happy and hun- 
gry to eat a real hunter’s tea by the roaring 
fire in the big hall, a tea flanked by all manner 
of good things, for Mrs. Harland was a West- 
country woman and would have afternoon tea 


A Ghost 


123 


a substantial meal instead of the delicate thing 
it is in towns. 

They would enjoy a huge tea and then 
Kitty would vanish for a time and appear fresh 
and fragrant, all the traces of the day’s hard 
riding removed, in one of the virginal white 
frocks she wore of evenings: and sometimes 
Pat would go home and change and come back 
again to dine, for Cuthbert Mayne kept his 
room much in these days, and was a little more 
invalidish than usual. Mrs. Harland, the kind, 
good-natured woman, could not endure to 
think of Pat spending a solitary evening which 
she looked on as most unnatural for a young 
man like him. 

After dinner the elders would sit and read 
by the fire while Kitty sang at the piano and 
Pat turned the pages of her music for her. 
Sometimes Pat played. He was a very good 
musician, good enough to make Kitty shy and 
apologetic over the little old-fashioned songs 
that seemed to suit her rose-bud youth. Pat 
found nothing amiss with her songs or her 
small pure voice. He could come back quite 
simply from the great music, which he played 


124 


A Ghost 


with passionate expression, to Kitty’s Irish 
melodies or English ballads and find a fresh 
delight in their innocencies. 

It occurred to him one night as he rode home 
about the time the fortnight of Diana’s absence 
was coming to a close that he did not really 
know how he would have got through the time 
without the pleasant and friendly house. While 
he thought of it the light in the district nurse’s 
little house at Golden Green went out as he 
came near as though the sound of Ills horse’s 
feet on the hard causeway of the road was its 
signal for extinction. He remembered, care- 
lessly, that it had happened so for many nights 
now, but thought of it only as an odd coinci- 
dence, not supposing it could have any other 
meaning. In the darkness the figure of the 
woman who stood behind the little gate post, 
with her hands clasped over her leaping heart, 
was invisible. 

He was quite prepared to return to his alle- 
giance to Diana. The last thing that would 
have occurred to him was that she was a some- 
what exacting lady to serve. There would 
be days when she would not need him and he 


A Ghost 


125 


could go hunting with the Harlands. There 
were just two days now before he should see 
her. His loyal heart gave a leap as he imag- 
ined her face — such a face as might have 
inspired the great poets and the great musi- 
cians. There was no one like her. He had 
not discovered how much Diana’s beauty owed 
to her dress and the background of her beau- 
tiful house. She never wore the short home- 
spun dresses of the country ladies in which she 
might have lost her goddess-like air. Her silks 
and velvets, her beautiful laces, her furs and 
fine woolens might have been thought out by 
the most consummate coquette or by an artist 
in love with his subject. Yet Diana would 
have said, and said truly, that she gave little 
thought or time to her dress or her looking- 
glass. 

Diana did not hunt. She had no violent 
delights. And there would be days when she 
did not heed him, which he could give to his 
new friends who were so oddly like old friends. 
The reluctance with which he thought of giv- 
ing up the pleasant hunting days was some- 
thing of a surprise to himself. With simple 


126 


A Ghost 


boyish sophistry he said to himself that though 
Diana did not hunt herself she would wish him 
to hunt as she wished him to play cricket, be- 
cause it was an English sport. 

Two days — only two days — forty-eight 
hours, and of these he should sleep some 
twenty. He remembered when the fortnight 
had loomed before him interminably long and 
empty, before that good Samaritan, Mrs. Har- 
land, had taken him in hand and filled his 
empty days. He had begun by solacing him- 
self innocently, reducing the days in his cal- 
endar with a stroke through each one that 
passed, imagining a delight in the dwindling 
days. But the third or fourth day he had for- 
gotten. He had been too pleasantly tired 
coming home at night to remember to cross 
out yet another day: and now the calendar 
hung on the wall confronting him, accusing 
him, if only he had noticed it, with its tale of 
three days when twelve had passed. 

Rather to his surprise, for it was eleven 
o’clock, he found his uncle up and downstairs 
by the drawing-room fire. He came in full 
of his apologies. He was so sorry Uncle Cuth- 


A Ghost 


127 


bert should have spent the evening alone. If 
he had had the least idea Uncle Cuthbert 
would have come down to dinner he would 
have dined at home. 

The sick man looked up at him with a smile 
for his bonniness. Pat was indeed hard to 
resist, Pat’s air of golden youth, his simpli- 
cities, his sweetnesses. 

“Never mind, lad,” said Cuthbert Mayne. 
“Uam glad you amuse yourself. I am not 
selfish enough to tie you to a sick man’s bed.” 

He avoided with almost painful anxiety ask- 
ing Pat where he had dined. He hoped it 
was not with the Harlands again: but he did 
not dare ask. After all he had laid that re- 
sponsibility on Father Peter. And something 
had happened — that might distract Pat. An 
intervention — Cuthbert Mayne fondly hoped 
it might be an intervention. 

“I’ve a letter from Mrs. Evelyn, Pat,” he 
said. “She and Evelyn are coming here to- 
morrow by motor. These infernal new contri- 
vances. I can’t see Mary Evelyn in one some- 
how. They want to take you back with them, 
lad. Will you go?” 


128 


A Ghost 


The Evelyns’ friendship for Pat Mayne had 
been unbroken. There had been years when 
his only regular English visitors at Fiirsten- 
burg had been the Evelyns. Mrs. Evelyn had 
always treated him with motherly tenderness. 
Before the Fiirstenburg days, while he was 
still a little child, he had been brought up with 
the Evelyns’ little girls. There were close and 
tender ties between him and them. But of 
late years the Evelyns had been traveling 
about the world, their big house in Yorkshire 
let. 

“Phil comes with them,” Cuthbert Mayne 
said, watching Pat wistfully. “There is a bit 
of news. Joan is engaged. They are very 
well pleased. Young Dick Frazer, a son of 
Sir Anthony. You don’t know anything 
about them. I was at Eton and Oxford with 
Anthony Frazer.” 

“Ah, I am glad, sir. I hope he is good 
enough for Joan. I’m glad it’s not Phil. I 
suppose I oughtn’t to be glad. But — I can’t 
imagine any one good enough for Phil. Why, 
I haven’t seen Phil for three years.” 


A Ghost 


129 


“You’ll go back with them? They are look- 
ing forward to being at Dale again. It will 
be so good for them to be at home.” 

He watched Pat, still with the same wistful 
hope in his eyes. Father Peter and he had 
talked over it — that chance for Pat’s happi- 
ness. If Pat and Phil would only fall in love ! 
The Evelyns had so sure a footing in the next 
world that they were little bound by the opin- 
ions of this. And Pat was like a son to them. 
They would not visit on him nor on Phil, who 
had grown up in such a warm atmosphere of 
loving kindness, the sins of his fathers. 

“Of course I shall go,” said Pat, but there 
was a sound in his voice which said that he 
wished he need not go just at this moment. 
“It wall be delightful to see them again. How 
long are they staying?” 

“They are at Claridge’s for a few weeks. 
They hope to get into Dale for Christmas. 
You will have some gaieties, Pat, see a little 
of town.” 

“You can do without me, sir?” 

Cuthbert Mayne smiled. It was so like Pat 
to think of that. And, after all he had been 


130 


A Ghost 


doing without Pat a good deal of late, had done 
without him for many years before that. 
When he suffered he secluded himself. He 
had no desire to cast the shadow of his suf- 
fering over Pat’s young life. 

“I shall endeavor to, Pat. After all, we 
did without each other for a good many years.” 

“Not my doing, sir.” 

“No: my own.” He spoke with an old- 
fashioned conscientiousness. “I should be 
very sorry, Pat, to exact too much from you. 
You are always most kindly willing to be my 
companion when I am able to bear compan- 
ionship. You must always tell me if there’s 
something else you prefer to do. I should 
hate to exact an unwilling companionship.” 

“You need never fear that, sir, with me.” 

Pat kept his hunting appointment with the 
Harlands next morning — turning his horse 
homewards, having left Kitty in her father’s 
charge at quite the beginning of a most excit- 
ing run. After all he could not be sorry that 
he was going to see the Evelyns. He won- 
dered what Phil was like. He had only caught 
a glimpse of her three years ago and had been 


A Ghost 


131 


amazed at the change from the leggy school- 
girl to the slender grace of nineteen. The 
girls were not exactly pretty. Some people 
found them better than pretty with their round 
vivacious brunette faces and bright intelligent 
eyes. And Phil was his favorite of the two 
sisters. He should have felt a brotherly jeal- 
ously if Phil had been engaged. 

After all — if only it hadn’t come at this 
moment — it would be uncommonly pleasant 
to stay with the Evelyns and squire Phil about 
town. Joan was with her fiance’s people in 
Devonshire so he should have Phil to himself. 
London was still an undiscovered country to 
Pat. Phil was to discover it for him, or rather 
he was to discover it in Phil’s delightful com- 
pany. There would be very few people in 
town, Mrs. Evelyn said, meaning the people of 
their world. But there was always plenty to 
do in London, especially for Pat, who wanted 
to discover London and had not even seen St. 
Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. 

The very day that Pat went off with the 
Evelyns Kitty’s mare had gone lame and she 
had returned home early. Major Harland 


132 


A Ghost 


came in about five o’clock, and finding Kitty 
alone, save for the half circle of dogs before 
the fire in the hall, asked where her mother 
was. He did not seem to hear Kitty’s inquiry 
about the run: at least he did not answer it, 
but went straight upstairs, hardly noticing the 
fawning dogs beyond Jane, the pug, his special 
pet, whom he had picked up absent-mindedly 
and carried with him upstairs. 

He found Mrs. Harland in her bedroom 
turning out a cupboard. 

“Kate,” he said, flinging himself down into 
the nearest chair, “I’ve seen a ghost.” 

Mrs. Harland turned and looked at him. 
They were not at all nervy people, but her 
husband certainly looked disturbed. 

“A ghost!” she repeated. “What do you 
mean, Hugo? What sort of a ghost?” 

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “We had rather a 
long run — found twice, and the last an old dog 
fox who showed us a clean pair of heels all over 
the country till we lost him in Potten Wood. 
He deserved to have another day’s run for he 
gave us some good sport. I lost my way com- 
ing back and got into a wretched hole of a vil- 


A Ghost 


133 


lage: I could smell the dampness and see an 
occasional pool glimmering in the fields, al- 
though it was too dark to see much. I pulled 
up in the village to ask where I’d got to. 
There was no one about I could ask, but as I 
was standing there, looking about me, a woman 
came out of one of the cottages — a woman 
dressed in black — not a cottager. As I called 
to her and she looked up at me the light from 
a lamp which some one had placed in the cot- 
tage window, apparently to guide her, streamed 
on to her face. Kate — if it wasn’t Milly Lutt- 
rell it was her ghost. Older, of course, but 
wonderfully little changed. Something child- 
ish about her looks still.” 

“Milly Luttrell ! She went out of England, 
didn’t she? We heard something about where 
she went to. Some foreign priest — a prince 
in his own country — befriended her, we heard 
— after — she came out. I wonder what became 
of the little boy.” 

“I don’t care where she went to,” said the 
Major obstinately. “I’m quite sure it was 
Milly. Recognized me too, for, before I could 


134 


A Ghost 


do anything but stare, she disappeared into the 
darkness.” 

“You didn’t fancy it, Hugo? Poor Milly! 
I wonder if it were really she?” 

“You’ve no animosity against her, Kate?” 

“No, poor thing. She was punished enough. 
I wonder if we could do anything for her, 
Hugo, supposing it were really she.” 

“I believe you’re the most generous woman 
alive, Kate,” her husband said, with tender 
admiration. 

“After all, Hugo — it is you who have to for- 
give. To be sure I — find it easier to forgive 
for myself.” 

“By Jove!” said Major Harland suddenly. 

He looked at his wife with a light of dis- 
covery breaking over his face. 

“By Jove, Kate,” he said. “I know now 
who young Mayne is like. He is like Milly. 
Nothing in it, of course. But still it is there.” 

“I believe it is,” assented Mrs. Harland. “A 
coincidence. Pat is very fair, as Milly used 
to be. But there could be nothing in it.” 


CHAPTER IX 

PAT REMEMBERS 

flfoiss markham missed her young adorer 
more than she could have imagined possi- 
ble. Moreover she resented his willingness to 
be away from her side. She had looked to find 
him impatiently awaiting her return. The let- 
ter of explanation which breathed all manner 
of suppressed ardors was all very well: it was 
no substitute for the loving devotion that 
waited on her beck and call. She would not 
acknowledge to herself that she had come 
home with a certain anticipation of Pat. 

To add to her dissatisfaction Mrs. Frith, 
who had been cold to Pat’s golden graces, 
took what seemed to Diana a malignant pleas- 
ure in letting her know how Pat had been 
happy in her absence. Saxham, like all small 
communities, buzzed with gossip. Mrs. Pier- 
pont had been to visit Mrs. Frith as an act of 
charity in Miss Markham’s absence, and had 
commented on the great freedom the Harlands 
135 


136 


Pat Remembers 


allowed their daughter with special reference 
to Pat’s attendance upon her. 

Worse, Lord Halstead came in, carelessly 
smiling as though he had not known of Diana’s 
absence, mentioned that he had been up in 
town without any suggestion that he should 
have sought her there, and referred casually 
to the fact that he had been a house-mate at 
Claridge’s with Pat and a very delightful fam- 
ily of Yorkshire Evelyns — father, mother and 
daughter. 

Miss Evelyn apparently was a very learned 
young lady, who had carried off all manner of 
distinctions. “A more unspoilt creature,” 
said Halstead, with unfeigned enthusiasm, “it 
would be impossible to imagine. Scarcely 
pretty. It would be an outrage to call Phil 
Evelyn pretty. Something much better than 
pretty. A dear, dark face, with a dimple in 
either cheek, breathing intelligence and humor. 
And the whole family devoted to Pat.” 

Lord Halstead had lived down Miss Mark- 
ham’s displeasure with him. He came much 
less often than of old, but when he came it was 
still with the manner of an old and privileged 


Pat Remembers 


137 


friend. He was much less exacting than of 
old. Time had been when he had treated Diana 
as though necessarily his affairs must be of 
interest to her. She did not like the change. 
She wanted to be a man’s Egeria. If she 
could be Egeria to two or three men so much 
the better. Now she felt oddly pushed out. 
The readiness of the old friend to do without 
her was a blow. And Pat ! She had imagined 
Pat worshipping at the empty shrine. Pat 
apparently had been contenting himself very 
well elsewhere. 

Suddenly Diana found that her old selfless 
occupations did not suffice her. She was only 
woman after all. After all Denis Markham 
had not made his daughter less or more than 
woman. He would not have wished it, being 
the wise man he was, and he had not feared it. 
He had known his girl very feminine under 
her pose of an intellectual vestal virgin. 

She chose now to seek out and make much 
of Kitty Harland — forgetting that first day’s 
prejudice, she hardly knew why. The girl 
was overwhelmed, delighted that the goddess 
should stoop to her. In her humility she re- 


138 


Pat Remembers 


sealed herself to Diana as the sweet and sim- 
ple creature she was. Diana said to herself, 
not knowing that she was jealous, that Kitty 
Harland and Pat were made for each other. 

The day Pat came back, looking well and 
happy after his three weeks of sight-seeing, he 
flew to Diana, only to find Lady Caroline 
Frayne drinking tea in the drawing-room. 
Diana, in a wonderful trailing gown of deepest 
blue, with a hanging girdle encrusted barbar- 
ously with colored stones, received him with an 
aloof kindness that chilled the devotee’s heart. 
Had he offended her? Oh, she was more beau- 
tiful than ever — she was like a dark night of 
stars; she ought to have the moon in her hair 
and the stars for her girdle. There was no 
one like her. 

When he had received his tea-cup from 
Diana’s hand, Lady Caroline resumed what 
she had been saying. He had heard her slightly 
husky flat tones as he came up the stairs with 
a little cloud falling on his delight because 
Diana had a visitor. 

He would have talked to Mrs. Frith, knit- 
ting quietly in her corner, by the fire, but con- 


Pat Remembers 


139 


trariwise to Pat’s experience of the world Mrs, 
Frith had never seemed to desire to talk to him. 
She found herself deaf in one ear, and that the 
ear turned towards Pat, when he tried to talk 
to her. 

He did not need to submit himself to be 
snubbed, for Lady Caroline raked him into 
the conversation with her usual vivacity. 

“You’re the very person I’ve wanted to 
meet, my dear Mr. Mayne,” she said. “You 
are a great friend of the Harlands, aren’t you? 
Well, Saxham has come upon a delightful sen- 
sation. It seems these are the Harlands — or 
so we suspect — the Harlands of the Great Sap- 
phire Case. You wouldn’t know about it, my 
dear Di, nor you, Mr. Mayne, except from 
hearsay. You were both babies in the nursery 
when it all happened, and it is too recent to 
have become history. I remember it very well 
— so, I expect, does Mrs. Frith.” 

Mrs. Frith glanced up from what she was 
doing and nodded her head slightly. Lady 
Caroline was one of her antipathies, a fact 
which her Ladyship recognized cheerfully, 
while lamenting that Di didn’t make her com- 


140 


Pat Remembers 


panion know her place and not have likes and 
dislikes like any independent creature. 

“We’ve all called on the Harlands,” said 
her Ladyship in huge delight — “so we can’t 
undo that. The question is, shall we ask them 
to dinner? I don’t quite remember the details 
or whether the man was properly cleared.” 

Mrs. Frith lifted up her quiet eyes. 

“Major Harland was absolutely cleared, 
Lady Caroline,” she said. “There was the 
deepest sympathy for him and for Mrs. Har- 
land. Everyone felt that they behaved beau- 
tifully. They were only less in the public 
sympathy and affection than the poor husband. 
What a tragedy it was.” 

“Oh, thank you,” said Lady Caroline, “you 
have a better memory than I have. I am re- 
lieved to know that we may ask them to din- 
ner. They will have an atrocious dinner with 
me. I can only give my cook thirty pounds a 
year and the wretch doesn’t earn her money. 
If it wasn’t for the kindness of my friends I 
should starve. The Harlands have a French 
cook, I hear, and they are sinfully extravagant. 
Asparagus out of season, my dear, and peaches 


Pat Remembers 


141 


at I don’t know how much a dozen, and excel- 
lent wine. I give my guests claret at a shil- 
ling a bottle from Pratt’s, the grocer’s. I am 
going to invite the Harlands immediately. If 
I can secure them for next Tuesday week my 
dear Di, will you come to meet them?” 

Miss Markham laughed. No one was ever 
shocked or disgusted whatever Lady Caroline 
might say. 

“I shall come with great pleasure,” she said. 
“After all, what does it matter what one pays 
one’s cook? At your table Lady Caroline, one 
does not think of food.” 

“Well said, my dear, but some of my guests 
think of it afterwards — with loathing. You 
are young enough not to care, and a good 
thing. Greediness is not becoming in youth. 
It is one of the compensations of age that one 
may be as greedy as one pleases. How good 
your hot cakes are, Diana.” 

“Let me ring for more,” said Miss Mark- 
ham, ringing the bell, without any protest on 
Lady Caroline’s part. 

It was Lady Caroline’s way to invite people 
into the conversation and then monopolize it. 


142 


Pat Remembers 


Pat had no chance to say what was on his 
tongue, and that was an eager defense of the 
Harlands, without knowing what they had 
done or might have done. Now the need for 
it had passed. Lady Caroline had accepted 
Mrs. Frith’s memory of the matter. And 
while Lady Caroline talked in her random way 
he was troubled by something that had occa- 
sionally troubled him only to be lost again. 

None of the people who loved Pat and would 
have sheltered him against the world — not 
Father Peter, not Cuthbert Mayne — not Mary 
Evelyn — had counted upon the memory of a 
child of three. But again and again there 
came back to Pat shadows and words out of a 
distance so dim that it might well have had no 
existence except in a dream. 

There had been some one who was called 
Mamma, a beautiful person, who used to come 
into the nursery and play with Pat. And 
there v/as some one who used to look on and 
laugh — not nearly so beautiful as Mamma, but 
very pleasant in Pat’s memory and very pa- 
tient and gentle about winding up engines and 
playing at bears on the nursery floor. A dark 


Pat Remembers 


143 


curly head, that Pat used to use as a horse’s 
head or an elephant’s or a bear’s, whatever par- 
ticular steed Pat happened to be mounted on 
at that moment : that was surely Papa. Papa 
came oftener than Mamma and stayed longer. 
Mamma used to run in as a bewildering vision 
and kiss Pat and run away again. 

The name Harland had not been hitherto 
in his dreams: yet when he had met the Har- 
lands he had had a baffling sense of familiarity 
with it. 

Now as the fire sang and spluttered, and the 
tea-urn hissed and Lady Caroline’s flat viva- 
cious voice went on monopolizing the convex - 
sation, he had a sudden strange withdrawal 
from it all. For a period — he knew not how 
long — he was lost to what was happening 
about him, even to Diana’s face. 

He was little Pat once more, a little Pat 
three years old and he was lying, wide-eyed in 
his little white bed in the nursery, from the 
windows of which one looked over the housetop 
to the trees of the park. Little Pat was awake 
and sobbing quietly to himself in the darkness 


144 


Pat Remembers 


because for several days now Papa and Mam- 
ma seemed to have forgotten him. 

The fire was low in the nursery grate and 
the room was dark except for a chink of light 
which came through a door not quite closed. 
In the day-nursery beyond, the two white- 
clothed nurses who were required to look after 
one small baby, were gossiping. Pat hardly 
noticed what they were saying. He was too 
troubled by the disturbance in the house, which 
seemed to throw his life out of gear by the ab- 
sence of his father and mother, to care what the 
nurses were saying. He had not been taken 
out for several days and the nurses did not 
seem to have much inclination to play with 
him, so time had hung heavy on his hands. 

One of the nurses had begun to read, and the 
monotony of the voice had after a time sent 
Pat to sleep, but before he went to sleep he had 
been aware of certain names constantly recur- 
ring in the reading. There was Luttrell very 
often. Pat was not surprised at that. When 
a little boy’s world is chiefly Papa and Mamma 
with a few friends thrown in and servants in 
the background it is not surprising that the 


Tat Remembers 


145 


rest of the world should he much concerned 
with his. But there was another name that 
occurred nearly or quite as often. Pat had 
not remembered it over all these years. Now 
he had a sudden revelation that the name was 
Harland. 

Sometime in the same dream Pat had sud- 
denly heard his father’s voice in the house and 
had dropped his aimless play and run to the 
head of the staircase, calling “Papa!” But 
there had been a little gate at the head of the 
stairs, bolted, out of reach of the small crea- 
ture, which he could not pass, and he had been 
captured and brought back into the nursery 
by Nanna, the head nurse, whom he did not 
like. For once she had not given him the shake 
she usually did when she picked him up so 
abruptly, but had thrust a box of bricks upon 
him and bidden him not trouble his poor Papa. 

Worse days followed when no one had lei- 
sure to attend to Pat — when Nanna had van- 
ished and Maud, the younger nurse, who had 
done all the work while Nanna lounged in a 
chair, had even forgotten to wash Pat’s face, 
which was not the cleaner because Maud, who 


146 


Pat Remembers 


looked strangely dirty and neglected to the 
child’s eyes, had seized upon him several times 
and hugged him, dropping big tears over his 
head and face. 

He had been close prisoned in the nursery 
in those days, and Maud had worn a scared 
look and had pushed her bed up close to Pat’s 
at night. His food was given to him carelessly 
out of kitchen utensils and small Pat had 
wanted his own pretty china with the dogs and 
cats and birds upon it and had howled for it. 
And Maud, in a sudden rage, had cuffed him, 
bidding him be quiet, that he’d have more to 
put up with than that: and he had forgiven 
her with a childish magnanimity, although he 
resented the indignity, because he knew some- 
how that Maud was overwrought and not ac- 
countable for what she did. Indeed, the next 
moment she had caught him to her heart and 
wept over him. 

Then there came a day when Maud remem- 
bered his toilet and he was hurriedly washed 
and brushed with a good deal of discomfort to 
himself in the process, for the soap got into 
his eyes and nose, and Maud tugged his hair 


Pat Remembers 


147 


dreadfully, and he kept wondering why Maud’s 
nose was swollen and her eyes inflamed. 

Midway of the uncomfortable toilet she had 
made what the child knew to be an unnatural 
pretense at cheerfulness and had bidden Pat 
guess who was coming to see him. Pat had 
straightway guessed Papa, at which Maud had 
suddenly thrown up her hands and shouted 
“Oh lor’!” and burst into violent tears, which 
rather frightened Pat, who did not dare to ask 
if it was Mamma, since it disturbed Maud so 
much to suggest Papa. 

He had not had very much time to consider 
it, for the visitor after all had been Mrs. Evelyn 
with whom Pat had had some very pleasant 
associations in his short life-time. She had 
taken Pat by the hand and led him down 
through a house so strangely dusty and dis- 
ordered that Pat could not realize it was his 
own, and he had wondered what had become of 
all the servants and where were the carpets 
and pictures gone to? And why were strange 
men in the hall, and the hall door open and 
people standing outside staring in? 


148 


Pat Remembers 


There had been a carriage at the door and 
Mrs. Evelyn had lifted him in, away from all 
the curious staring faces. And they had driven 
off.... 

Pat came out of his dream which had lasted 
much fewer minutes than it has taken to tell. 
Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps he had read 
it somewhere in a book when he was a child. 
The dream before had not had the continuity — 
the detail of this. He had not remembered so 
much. The name of Harland seemed to have 
linked it all together. The other name which 
had been Pat’s own — Luttrell, not Mayne. 
Surely it must have been all a dream — a dream, 
with its curious lapses and incongruities. It 
must have been that he had heard the servants 
reading or he had mixed it up with reality. 

He awoke to hear Mrs. Frith say, with a 
little snap in her voice : 

“Mrs. Harland was Lord Lowestoft’s 
daughter.” 

“And the Lowestofts had money,” Lady 
Caroline returned; “that is all that counts. 
What is birth? Look at me with my breeding, 
living in a gardener’s cottage and keeping a 


149 


Pat Remembers 

couple of sluttish maids. If I were not Lady 
Caroline, none of you’d call on me.” 

Her eyes were fixed on Pat Mayne. She 
took an opportunity before she left of taking 
Diana aside. 

“He’s positively beautiful, my dear,” she 
said. “If I were your age I couldn’t resist 
him. But does he often do it — that sleep-walk- 
ing, I mean? You saw he was absent from the 
body for quite five minutes. It was slightly 
uncanny. That mist now over him — it was the 
one thing needed to make him positively irre- 
sistible.” 

Diana shook her head. She had not noticed 
anything unusual about Pat. She thought 
Lady Caroline fancied a good deal. 

“Take my word for it,” her Ladyship said, 
as she put on the last of her queer wraps pre- 
paratory to driving off in her little donkey 
chaise. “It will be a match between him and 
the Harland child.” 


CHAPTER X 

THE SEVENTH HEAVEN 

2> i an a had assured herself that it was beyond 
the possibilities for her to fall in love with 
Pat Mayne. It was very pretty and very 
touching that he should be so devoted to her: 
but of course he was only a boy, her attitude 
towards him that of the one who stoops from 
her pedestal. 

She would have said a little while ago that 
she would be immensely interested in Pat’s love 
affairs; ready to take the object by the hand 
and make two adorers where there had been 
but one. 

Now inexplicably she was flung in a turmoil 
because Pat had been forgetting her. Was 
her solid earth shifting and breaking up? With 
Halstead cheerfully aloof and indifferent — 
Halstead, who had been always hers to take if 
she would, leave if she would — and Pat 
willing to let other girls console him in her 
absence, she began to have an absurd feeling 
of desolation. 


150 


The Seventh Heaven 


151 


After Lady Caroline had departed Mrs. 
Frith took her work-basket and went upstairs. 
If she had not succumbed to Pat’s young charm 
it was because she was preoccupied. Lord 
Halstead had never treated her as a negligible 
person as so many other people had. He had 
won the little woman’s loyal friendship. She 
looked on Pat as a usurper of his place and 
would consider him in no other light. Diana, 
understanding, liked her prickly little duenna 
none the less. 

She had a ridiculous feeling, left alone with 
Pat, that she would have liked a kind, fem- 
inine breast to weep upon. She had not many 
women friends, though the few she had were 
loyal: no one in Saxham to be considered 
except Mrs. Wynne, whose only son was home 
from India after many years : the indefatigable 
little old lady was trotting about with him from 
one place to another. They had just run over 
to Paris as an escape from the dullness of Sax- 
ham in Winter, so Mrs. Wynne was not avail- 
able. 

Diana had an air of gentle and long-suffer- 
ing patience, left alone with Pat Mayne, which 


152 


The Seventh Heaven 


made her more adorable than ever to the infat- 
uated young man’s mind. His heart had never 
really wandered from his divinity: only it was 
not in Pat to turn away from kindness and 
sweetness wherever he found it. 

He was conscious that there was something 
wrong with Diana. She was displeased. He 
laid himself out to propitiate her, distract her, 
trying to draw her on to the subjects in which 
they had a common interest, but the young 
lady remained obstinately sad. She was more 
beautiful being sad; like Pompilia at the win- 
dow, with the grave griefful air, when Capen- 
sacchi first beheld her. Pat had learnt to love 
his Browning. It was one of the things he 
owed to Diana. 

She refused to talk of the subjects which 
usually interested her. But, rousing herself, 
she remembered that she had a picture she 
wanted to show Pat, acquired during her visit 
to town. It had come from one of the old 
demolished churches of Italy. It might be only 
a copy — on the other hand it might be an orig- 
inal, and it was beautiful. 


The Seventh Heaven 


153 


Our Lady of all the Sorrows. Diana had 
given her a special shrine in a heavily curtained 
alcove, had set flowers about her feet and a 
lamp among them. The upturned streaming 
eyes, the desolation, the seven swords through 
the heart. The painter, whoever he was, had 
been inspired to render a heavenly sadness. 

“I shall have to answer it to Mr. Pierpont,” 
Diana said, gravely smiling. “He will think 
me a dangerous person. I fell in love with the 
shrines long ago in Italy. I always wanted to 
set up a shrine of my own.” 

They turned away, leaving the Mater Dolo- 
rosa in her shrine. Diana was grave, composed, 
sweet. And there was that curious little atmos- 
phere of sorrow about her. 

They went back to the long drawing-room. 
The lamps had not been lit. Diana had a love 
for firelight, and the lamps were not brought 
till she rang for them. The long room, with a 
fire at either end, was lit sufficiently with a 
warm glow. 

They sat down at either side of the fire. 
Diana leant her head with an air of weariness 
against the high back of her chair. She played 


154 


The Seventh Heaven 


with her girdle abstractedly. Her beauty was 
strange in this half-light, her face, pale as the 
moon, set in the storm clouds of her hair. Pat 
watched her in silence. He caught the glitter 
of tears in her eyes and his heart was like wax 
within him. 

Down he went on his knees. He laid his face 
in her lap. He caught the silken folds of her 
dress and pressed them to his lips. She was 
wearing violets in her bosom. The scent of 
them seemed all about him. He lifted his head 
and she was looking down at him. Not angry, 
not cold. There was a wonderful light on her 
face. She bent a little forward and her lips 
were not far from him. With a cry Pat drew 
her to him, kissed her, gathered her head to his 
breast, laid his own face in her hair. 

About an hour later Pat arrived home. 
Cuthbert Mayne, sitting among his books, had 
heard Pat’s horse coming at a gallop through 
the long avenue of trees by which the house 
was approached. The horse came so fast that 
it seemed as though he must bring news of 
some kind. 


The Seventh Heaven 


155 


Cuthbert Mayne had a curious qualm. So 
he had heard of riderless horses coming fast, 
mad with fright. Ridiculous — the horse was 
not foaled that could unseat Pat. Yet there 
might be accidents — an overhanging bough in 
the darkness: a horse might stumble. Pat 
ought really to be more careful. The avenue 
was very dark these winter nights. 

He lifted a corner of the blind, knowing all 
the time that he could see nothing. There was 
nothing, only the darkness outside and the 
sound of the horse coming, ridden at a reckless 
pace. 

By his fears Cuthbert Mayne measured the 
hold Pat had taken on his love. He heard the 
horse turn towards the stables. Then, after a 
few seconds of suspense, Pat’s foot on the 
stairs. Pat was running up with the eager 
springiness of youth. 

He came in, a living, glowing incarnation of 
joy, bringing a smell of the open air and the 
country with him. The heart of the sick elderly 
man leaped up at the sight of so much youth 
and joy. 


156 


The Seventh Heaven 


“My dear Uncle,” said Pat, coming and lay- 
ing his hands on his uncle’s shoulders. The life 
and warmth of them tingled through the veins 
of the man who was always chilly in his warm 
rooms. “My dear Uncle, I am the happiest 
man alive.” 

Cuthbert Mayne looked at Pat with a fright- 
ened air. Pat, triumphant, was very good to 
look upon. He was flushed, his eyes shining, 
his lips smiling, his golden hair slightly dis- 
hevelled. 

“Who is it?” he asked, with a pretense of 
humor. 

“Oh — my dear Uncle, the one woman. 
Diana Markham has stooped to me.” 

Cuthbert Mayne smiled at the odd un- 
English manner of it. He was relieved on the 
whole that it was Miss Markham. It might 
have been Kitty Harland. 

In a few days all the country-side knew. 
Most people disapproved. Some thought it 
a folly on Miss Markham’s part to think of 
marrying a boy half a dozen years younger 
than herself and with the immortal youthful- 
ness of Pat. Others professed pity for Lord 


The Seventh Heaven 


157 


Halstead. The most malicious, but they were 
very few, hinted that Miss Markham consoled 
herself with Pat for Lord Halstead’s deser- 
tion. 

No one could detect a chink in Lord Hal- 
stead’s armor. He had the news first from 
Kitty Harland. He had struck up a friend- 
ship with Major Harland and was very fre- 
quently to be found at the hospitable house 
where the right people might come at any 
moment assured of their welcome. 

Kitty was palpitating with the news. Per- 
haps because it was too good not to make the 
most of she saved it all through lunch. Lord 
Halstead had been shooting a friend’s pheas- 
ants in Sussex and had only just come back. 
Kitty was nearly sure he had not heard. 

She saved it till the hour after lunch when 
she smoked a cigarette with Lord Halstead 
by the pond which had a walk covered in by 
trees running down one side of it, a favorite 
haunt of Kitty’s. They stood by the pond with 
the dogs in an expectant group at their heels. 
If Kitty was not going to take them for a walk 
she should not have inveigled them from the 


158 


The Seventh Heaven 


warm fireside to this chilly atmosphere with- 
out. 

“Now tell me what you have been doing 
while I’ve been away,” Halstead said. He had 
the manner towards Kitty as though she were 
ten. 

He wondered what she was thinking of. She 
was curiously fascinating as she stood there 
gazing at the pond with a cigarette between 
her lips, her eyes soft with some thought to 
which he had no clue. He could not know that 
under the waters of the reedy pond there lay 
Pat’s cigarette case, which he had tossed away 
one day because Kitty had not liked the pic- 
ture of an actress upon its cover. 

She lifted her blue eyes to Halstead’s face 
and administered innocently the sharpest stab 
he had ever received. 

“Pat Mayne is in the seventh heaven,” she 
said, “because Diana has accepted him.” 

She was too much of a new-comer to be 
acquainted with the gossip of the place. Per- 
haps she never thought of Lord Halstead, who 
had made friends with Papa as with a contem- 
porary, as a possible mate for the wonderful 


The Seventh Heaven 


159 


Miss Markham. But she had a sudden shocked 
compunction at what she saw. For a second 
Halstead was unprepared. The child saw with 
a wondering pity and consternation the change 
in his face. She understood. Never again 
could Lord Halstead be to her the person, 
immensely older than herself, who accepted 
Papa as a contemporary and might be sup- 
posed to have quiet middle-aged pulses. 

“I am so sorry/’ she began in a frightened 
voice. 

“Don’t be sorry, Kit,” Lord Halstead 
answered: and the sudden passion and deso- 
lation, momentarily revealed to her and gone 
over, might have been only in her fancy. 
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t you know that it is 
one of the hardest things for a man to hear 
that people should be sorry for him?” 

So he did not deny it to her. He finished 
his cigar and went away, much to the dis- 
appointment of the dogs who had come to 
associate his visits with a walk, for he and 
Kitty had often walked together since the 
beginning of his friendship with her father. 

She kept his secret loyally. After the first 


160 


The Seventh Heaven 


she ceased to wonder that Lord Halstead 
should have been in love with Diana. She 
seemed to have got a new view of him in that 
moment when his face had shown the stunning 
blow she had dealt him. Out of his presence 
her tender heart suffered, remembering how 
easily and lightly she had dealt him that blow. 

He had quite forgiven her, if indeed he had 
felt that there was anything to forgive. But 
in the first moment something had escaped 
him which he might not have said if he had 
not been taken by surprise. 

“Child,” he had said, “I thought, when you 
began to tell me, that Pat was in the seventh 
heaven because you had placed him there. It 
would have been more suitable.” 

Kitty had heard the suggestion with amaze- 
ment. She had always known that Pat was in 
love with Diana. Why should it have been 
her own story she was about to tell? Why 
should it have been more suitable if it had been 
Kitty Harland rather than Diana Markham 
who was to marry Pat? She did not answer 
her own questions. She was very glad that 
Pat had the desire of his heart. She did not 


The Seventh Heaven 


161 


expect to see him constantly as she had been 
seeing him of late. She resigned herself to 
going back to a comparative solitude with the 
dogs and the horses for company, for she did 
not make friends easily: and Papa and 
Mamma, though they were very fond of their 
little daughter, always had so much to say to 
each other that Kitty usually left them together 
without any consciousness on their part that 
she did so. 

If any one had been noticing just then who 
loved Kitty and was sensitive to her moods, 
they might have discovered perhaps a solitari- 
ness about the little figure as it went to and 
fro, a wistfulness in the face. But these things 
remained undiscovered even by the girl her- 
self. Her thoughts were often with Pat and 
Diana. She missed Pat in the hunting field 
where he came less because Diana did not hunt. 
Pat had whispered in Kitty’s ear that the wed- 
ding was fixed for Easter week, and she had 
told him she was very glad. 

Lord Halstead looked after her now in the 
hunting-field where Pat had been accustomed 
to do it. He was kind and careful and would 


162 


The Seventh Heaven 


put a check on her wildness as Pat had not 
thought of doing. She had an inexplicable 
shyness of him because he had thought that it 
was she who had made Pat’s seventh heaven 
instead of Diana : and her point of view 
towards him had changed. She was not likely 
to forget what for a second he had let her see — 
a man’s anguish and despair : she was not likely 
ever again to think of him easily as a contem- 
porary or nearly a contemporary of Papa. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE SMALL AND NARROW HOUSE 

|[t was February now, and it was going to 
be an early Easter. The weeks were rac- 
ing round to Pat’s joy. Forty days of Lent 
were close at hand and after that April and 
the lover’s moon. 

For Pat the time went all too slowly. Diana 
had been up in town preparing her trousseau 
and Pat, after a day or so of absence from her, 
must needs follow her, although, as Mrs. 
Wynne assured him, Diana would do her busi- 
ness far more expeditiously in his absence. 

February and the dappled skies — the snow- 
drops and the first crocus and the nest-building 
beginning. Things were very busy at Grayes 
making ready for the bride, for Cuthbert 
Mayne had insisted on giving up Grayes to 
the young couple. There was a little house 
within the park walls, a house that sat in the 
sun against a background of wood sheltering 
it from the North and East, with flowers in 
their season crowding up to the low windows; 

163 


164 


The Small and Narrow House 


a house built originally for a gardener or a 
gamekeeper, which, in spite of protests, Cuth- 
bert Mayne would have for his own. 

When Pat protested that it was too humble, 
not good enough, his uncle answered oddly 
that it was too fine to die in. “Kings used to 
lie on the ashes to die,” he said. “I shall die 
where there is all for comfort that the unmor- 
tified man needs.” 

Cuthbert Mayne was very generous. He 
was stripping himself for Pat. Pat, simple 
and unpractical, knew very little about his 
uncle’s resources. He knew now that he was 
handing over to him the mansion and lands of 
Grayes, with securities and investments to 
bring him in an income of some six thousand 
a year. As Diana had money in her own right, 
Pat was likely to be very well off, too well off 
for a person of such simple tastes, for beyond 
a good horse or two in the stables, Pat’s 
requirements were easily satisfied. He was so 
much of a natural ascetic in his tastes that 
Father Peter had lamented with a twinkling 
eye that Pat had not chosen the lot of a poor 
priest like himself. 


The Small and Narrow House 


165 


Father Peter and Cuthbert Mayne had 
argued the case out, Father Peter even leav- 
ing Fenmoor to itself for the better part of 
two days in order to visit Cuthbert Mayne, 
who for this solitary occasion would not visit 
him. 

They had sat and argued the case in all its 
aspects. 

“My friend, the lady ought to know,” Father 
Peter had said sorrowfully. “If she is as great 
of heart as you say, she will not visit on Pat 
the sins of others.” 

“Don’t you see what it means to me — a man 
brought up in honorable traditions — to keep 
silence?” Cuthbert Mayne replied. “I could 
trust the girl. Can you look at Pat and doubt 
that it would go hard with a woman to give 
him up? And this is no conventional woman. 
She was brought up by a father who was a vis- 
ionary, an idealist, a madman, as the dullards 
called him. Fortunately, he left his mark upon 
his time despite the dullards. She would not 
cast out Pat, I truly believe. But there would 
be the boy himself to reckon with. When I 


166 


The Small and Narrow House 


think of telling Pat I would as soon put a 
bullet in his heart. Even Miss Markham 
would hardly make up, I think. Perhaps Pat 
would not allow her. We complicated mat- 
ters, Highness, when we sent Pat to Fursten- 
burg. He was not enough of a Quixote with- 
out adding on to him the rigid codes of honor 
of the German Army.” 

The priest shook his head sorrowfully. He 
had foreseen this moment for Pat these many 
days, and had prayed that it might be averted. 
What he had not foreseen was that Cuthbert 
Mayne would not face it. He measured the 
strength of the affection Pat had awakened in 
his uncle’s heart by the fact that Cuthbert 
Mayne would not face it. 

“She ought to know,” he persisted. “If she 
knew, perhaps she would agree that Pat need 
not know.” 

“And begin married life with that secret 
between them?” said Cuthbert Mayne, with a 
contempt for the simplicity of the priest — a 
contempt which had no insolence in its fierce 
gentleness. 


The Small and Narrow House 


167 


“You leave them on the edge of a precipice. 
There is nothing so difficult to cover up as the 
past. There are the Harlands.” 

“I have thought of that. Pat is unfortu- 
nately dreadfully like that unhappy woman. 
Since they did not discover the likeness at first 
it is probably lost for them now. Oh, don’t 
tell me that the past is difficult to lose. Don’t 
I know it? — who better than I ? Pat has asked 
questions, not only of me, but of Mary Evelyn. 
I lied. I don’t know what Mary Evelyn did. 
A lie on those lips of hers would indeed be like 
a venomous thing among the flowers. God 
knows he is easily deceived. Yet — he is dis- 
turbed, I can see, because he cannot trace his 
family back with a finger on the genealogical 
tree to glorious derivations. I have given him 
one. You know whose name I bear — Cuthbert 
Mayne, the Douai student who was racked to 
death in the spacious days? He was really a 
distant cousin of the Luttrells of that day. I 
have distracted Pat, bidding him look at Cuth- 
bert’s glories while I built up a spurious gen- 
ealogical tree. But for his foreign upbringing 
I could not have deceived him.” 


168 


The Small and Narrow House 


“His children will ask questions,” Father 
Peter said sadly. “If it does not all come out 
before then his sons will want to know.” 

“At least he will have had his day. And 
who knows — there may be no children to ask. 
A thousand things may happen. If Pat knew 
I think he would say that he must be the last 
Luttrell. Am I to pronounce his sentence of 
death? I heard of Denis Markham from close 
friends of his. The Evelyns knew him less 
well. Mary Evelyn and he made friends at a 
hotel and drifted apart in the way one does in 
traveling. From all I have heard of him he 
would not have forbidden the banns.” 

“I wish it had been Phil,” said the priest 
sorrowfully. “I wish it had been Phil. With 
Phil one would have been sure.” 

He went back to Fenmoor troubled for 
Cuthbert Mayne’s contumacy. He was not 
free to speak. He thanked Heaven humbly 
that the choice did not fall on him. He could 
sympathize deeply with Cuthbert Mayne. 
The hardest thing that could be laid upon him 
would be to destroy Pat’s happiness. 


The Small and Narrow House 


169 


Cuthbert Mayne had carried it off with a 
high hand at the last. He had bidden Father 
Peter to remember that his conscience was at 
ease. 

Father Peter doubted it. That shuffling off 
of everything — he had told Father Peter that, 
though Pat did not know it yet, he was going 
to be a pensioner on Pat’s bounty. There was 
remorse in that, the priest guessed, remorse 
also in the things he was doing for Diana with 
a feverish haste as though he could not do 
enough. He was having the family jewels 
re-set for her. He had mentioned it to Father 
Peter, with a sick shudder as though the sub- 
ject were abhorrent to him. 

“She would have had all these if she had 
waited,” he said: pushed the cases into a safe 
and snapped the lock upon them as though they 
were something noxious. 

Grayes was being embellished from top to 
bottom. It hardly stood in need of embellish- 
ment, but it was a solid old Georgian house, 
rather stately than beautiful, needing light- 
ness and brightness. It was all to be well 
advanced before Pat’s return. It was intended 


170 


The Small and Narrow Bouse 


as a surprise to him, and the place was alive 
with workmen, whom Cuthbert Mayne hurried 
as though the time were very short. 

Father Peter had to inspect what was being 
done. In Pat’s room, which the workmen had 
not yet reached — the room of a boy with Pat’s 
sword and pistols on the wall, his cricket-bat 
and pads in the corner, his austere little camp- 
bed becoming a soldier, his boxing-gloves 
tossed on the table by his writing desk, a pair 
of spurs here, a tobacco jar there, flanking a 
long German pipe and a couple of beer-glasses 
— Father Peter had a shock. 

Amid the photographs and sketches on the 
wall there looked down on him a delicate por- 
trait of a lady in water-color in a gilt oval 
frame. No need to ask who she was. Any one 
who had once seen Pat must have recognized 
the lady for his mother. 

Cuthbert Mayne stood, his eyes averted from 
the portrait, aware in every fiber of him of 
Father Peter’s shocked surprise. 

“Pat knows so much?” he said breaking the 
silence. 


The Small and Narrow House 


171 


4 ‘It is Kismet, blind Chance, what you will. 
Pat, having a wet day on his hands, ransacked 
the attics. She was standing there with her 
face to the wall as she will stand at Judgment 
Day. Pat came down carrying it in his arms, 
delighted with his find. He does not know she 
is his mother. His glass might have told him 
if he had troubled his glass. He has set her 
up there in the place of honor. I only pray 
he may keep her there away from people who 
might recognize her. Those Harlands for 
instance! What a complication! I suggested 
to Pat once that we should leave Saxham, if 
we could get rid of Grayes. He would not 
hear of it. Grayes was his first English home 
— after Germany I mean. He loves the place 
as though he were born in it.” 

Afterwards Father Peter had inspected 
Cuthbert Mayne’s own little house to be. 
Except that it was to be walled in books it was 
of startling plainness. No carpets on the floors, 
no curtains at the windows. A few plain arti- 
cles of furniture for utility. A cupboard in the 
sitting-room wall contained some plain glass 
and cutlery. There was but one sitting-room. 


172 


The Small and Narrow House 


but it had many windows and they looked 
south. A bedroom above was similarly situ- 
ated. There was the plainest of beds, of crock- 
ery, of plenishing right through. 

Father Peter noted it all. The absence of 
comforts, the small fireplaces, the draughtiness 
of the rooms. He had the foreign objection 
to draughts, although he had lived for so many 
years in the little house, tumbling to pieces, 
which had been condemned by the sanitary 
authorities who could not prevent him, as 
owner, living there. 

“Pat will not like it, my friend,” he said. 
“It is too uncomfortable.” He still pro- 
nounced it “ungomfortable.” “It is too uncom- 
fortable. And — you are hard on Brother Ass, 
the Body, as the dear St. Francis used to call 
it.” 

“I do not move in here till Pat is married,” 
Cuthbert Mayne said, with his inexplicable 
smile. “He will be too busy, now the time 
grows short, to inspect this. As for Brother 
Ass, he does not need very much, being in 
sight of a long rest.” 


The Small and Narrow House 


173 


Father Peter began to understand. He had 
always known Cuthbert Mayne as a sick man, 
sick in body and mind. Now he discovered 
suddenly, as he took snuff and passed it to the 
other man with a stealthy long look, that there 
was a change in the man whose sickness had 
always been taken for granted. His face 
which must have been ruddy once, had a 
leaden-blue color. He had a big frame. The 
flesh had melted away from it, and the skin 
hung loosely, bagging about his cheeks and 
throat like an ill-fitting garment. 

“What is it, my friend?” he asked. 

“Angina pectoris. I have kept it from Pat. 
Fortunately, so far, the attacks have not been 
frequent. I have denied myself Pat’s society, 
dearly as I love him. I am glad it is to be a 
quiet wedding ; otherwise I should have to stay 
away. You noticed I had a new servant. I 
had to pension off McGregor. The new man, 
Ellison, is a trained nurse-attendant. He 
keeps my secret as long as it can be kept.” 

“But Pat ought to know. It will be a long 
honeymoon. He would not forgive himself 
if....” 


174 


The Small and Narrow House 


“I should not forgive myself if I shadowed 
him with that. They will be three months 
away. I confess to you that my hope is that 
three months will end it for me. It will be a 
release. I am weary of suffering. And Pat 
will be able to bear it with that splendid crea- 
ture by his side.” 

Before Father Peter left he had an oppor- 
tunity of testing the likelihood of Cuthbert 
Mayne’s anticipations concerning himself. He 
was with him through one of the dreadful 
attacks, which none who has seen them can 
ever forget. Ellison stood by, applying this 
and that remedy, while F ather Peter, with one 
clammy hand in his, tried to strengthen the 
sufferer with all the invisible aids that Heaven 
could afford him, summoning to his help the 
radiant shapes which were as real to Father 
Peter as flesh and blood. 

At last it was over. Cuthbert Mayne lay 
exhausted with the dreadful bluish pallor about 
his lips. There was only a glimmer of leaden 
light under the eyelids. The man might have 
been dead. 


The Small and Narrow House 


175 


Presently, strong restoratives having been 
applied, he opened his eyes: he could speak, 
though only faintly. 

“I wish . . . you could . . be near me 
. . when the end comes . . . ” he said. 
“Now. .. .you see, my giving up.... was 
. . only . . pretended . . unselfishness. What 
have I . . to do with houses . . . seeing I shall 
not . . for long . . tenant my own? . . The 
small . . and narrow house . . . the house . . 
not builded . . by hands . . how close . . it 
keeps us prisoners . . . what a struggle it 
is . .to escape.” 

Father Peter went away with a case of con- 
science on his hands. Himself he felt that 
Pat’s bride ought to be told the truth, but if 
he persuaded Cuthbert Mayne of that might 
not he be willing to assume whatever guilt 
attached lest Pat should be struck down in the 
midst of his joy? 

He promised Cuthbert Mayne a long visit, 
as soon as he could get some one to take his 
place at Fenmoor. The Bishop had implored 
Father Peter to take a rest. He had worn 
himself to a shadow in his incessant trudging 


176 


The. Small and Narrow House 


after souls.. It would be Father Peter’s first 
holiday for forty-five years, despite the pro- 
tests of the reigning family of Fiirstenburg, 
who had brought all sorts of pressure to bear 
on Father Peter so that he might return for a 
little while to visit his relatives. 

This would be a holiday after Father Peter’s 
own mind. He would be at hand — if he were 
needed — when he was needed. He would help 
Cuthbert Mayne over the threshold of Eter- 
nity. He should not die alone with only a paid 
servant to keep him company. 

So much Father Peter said to Mousquetaire, 
explaining to Him why they were leaving Fen- 
moor for a time. After all, said Father Peter, 
men must talk to some one. It was a deal 
easier to tell things to Mousquetaire, who was 
a little well of secrecy giving up nothing once 
dropped into it, than to talk to people less 
discreet. 


CHAPTER XII 

THE ILL OMEN 


||^ at spent those last days between Grayes 
and Broom Hall, which was to be given 
up presently since they should not have need 
of two houses. A little flat in town perhaps, 
Pat suggested. Diana was thrown away on 
Saxham. He wanted the world to see his 
jewel. And Diana had agreed to the sugges- 
tion, rather surprising Pat by her eagerness. 
Something new had happened to Di; she 
grumbled at Saxham dullness, she who had 
always seemed to make her own world. She 
thought a flat in town would be very pleasant. 

There was a change in Di of which the young 
lover was aware in a puzzled way. She had 
moods — whims and fancies like any other wo- 
man : she had even tempers : Pat called it tem- 
perament, and so saved his loyalty. She was 
sharp with Pat once or twice : then almost dis- 
proportionately contrite when she saw she had 
hurt him. She could make Pat forget any- 
thing: and he excused her royally when she 
177 


178 


The 111 Omen 


was unreasonable, understanding that for such 
a creature as Diana to step down from her 
maiden throne and give herself in marriage 
was something of an unnerving ordeal. He 
vowed to himself that she should be delicately 
cherished, be worshipped and cared for as was 
never woman before. All the chivalry in his 
simple young heart was called forth by this 
beloved woman who had the incredible gene- 
rosity to give herself to unworthy Pat. 

She confessed one day, smiling through 
tears, that Saxham had got on her nerves after 
all those years. The first time she had wept 
Pat had been beside himself with alarm. She 
had reassured him, laughing at him because he 
did not know that, from the Queen on her 
throne to the least of her subjects, tears were 
the over-wrought woman’s relief. She did not 
deny that she was overwrought. “I wish it 
was over, Pat,” she said, in her young lover’s 
arms: and Pat echoed the wish fervently, al- 
though his motives doubtless were somewhat 
different. 

Every one was good to them. Presents 
crowded upon them. There was a lovely chest 


The III Omen 


179 


of delicate linen and lace from Pat’s friends 
in Fiirstenburg. Princess Mathilde, who had 
been like a mother to Pat, had the instincts of 
the German Hausfrau in her kind and ample 
bosom. The house linen was a wonder and de- 
light to Pat, because it was to be theirs, his and 
Di’s. If he had a grief it was because Grayes 
was so well plenished. If he had his will they 
would have started in quite a small way. He 
would have built the home, not taken pos- 
session of it ready built. 

Diana called him primitive for these desires. 
She was afraid she had no natural aptitude for 
house-work, though she loved the simple life. 
She saw the beauty of manual labor of the 
husband and wife side by side, making the 
home. The ideal had a dignity lost to their 
complicated over-convenanced life. Then she 
would look at her white hands and laugh. And 
Pat would laugh, too, with a little ruefulness 
because he could not have everything, stoop- 
ing to kiss the hands covered with rings. 

He found Diana weeping again one day 
when several packets had arrived. A leather 
case stood open on the table before her, re- 


180 


The 111 Omen 


vealing against a background of white velvet a 
light and delicate tiara of pearls and diamonds, 
Lord Halstead’s gift. 

“He should not have given me pearls,” she 
said, with a wan smile like the sun coming 
through rain. “Pearls are for tears, you 
know.” 

Pat thought he understood. Lord Halstead 
had been in love with her. That was common 
property. She was sorry for him. It was no 
end of decent of him to have behaved so well. 
He had sent such a lovely gift — almost ex- 
travagantly lovely. And it had touched her 
heart, that generosity of the unloved lover. Of 
jealousy Pat had no thought. To his arro- 
gant youth Lord Halstead with his more than 
forty years was quite beyond the thought of 
love. 

Mrs. Frith sat in her corner and knitted in 
those days with the air of a Fate. Pat was a 
little chilled by her. She had not wished him 
joy. Pat could not ignore her sitting there 
in Di’s chimney-corner with an air that quite 
obviously did not wish him joy. 

Diana was going to pension her off. She 
was to have a cottage in Saxham, and since 


The III Omen 


181 


she had a taste for work among the poor she 
need not be idle. She was the one thing who 
looked unfriendly on Pat in those days. “Poor 
thing!” Pat thought. She was to be banished 
from Diana. That explained it. She ought 
to have generosity enough to accept the situ- 
ation with, at least, outward amiability. But 
Pat was ready to make allowances. It was 
hard to be banished from Diana, having been 
so long in the sunshine of her face. 

Pat rather wished she were not so much in 
evidence during those last days. The very os- 
tentation with which she would get up and 
glide away, dropping her knitting and picking 
it up half-a-dozen times during her progresses 
down the long room, annoyed him. He had 
almost rather she stayed. 

Pat had blossomed out surprisingly dandy- 
ish in these days. His wedding-clothes were in 
the making. Meanwhile Savile Row had sent 
him half a dozen suits as near gaiety as the 
British male garments may ever come. Pat’s 
lightness of heart broke out in socks and ties 
and a flower in the button-hole. Meeting him 


182 


The III Omen 


walking down the village street one day Lord 
Halstead positively blinked, Pat was so ra- 
diantly young. 

Halstead turned, and the two men walked 
side by side. There was something in Pat’s 
manner, something so light, so delicate, a mere 
shade of feeling, that only Halstead’s sore 
sensitiveness could have detected it. 

“I believe the youngster’s sorry for me,” he 
said to himself, and winced. 

They left the village behind. Halstead had 
inquired about Diana and Pat had answered 
with a certain shyness. Pat was readier to 
talk of other things than of the great event 
which was only some ten days ahead. 

At the cross-roads they parted. Lord Hal- 
stead held out his hand and Pat wrung it hard- 
ly, being quite unconscious of the fervor of his 
hand-shake. Halstead looked at him and did 
not hate him. The dazzling youth seemed 
even to inspire a certain pity in the elder man. 

“I have not wished you joy,” he said. “You 
are marrying a precious woman. Take care of 
her and be humble.” 


The 111 Omen 


183 


Pat broke out in protestations. Halstead 
felt that he need not have added that about the 
humility. Pat was very humble. 

On the Tuesday in Easter week there was a 
social event in Mickleden, the country town, 
to which all Saxham turned out. It was a ball 
in aid of the County Hospital and uniforms 
were worn. Just for this once, to please his 
bride, Pat appeared in the uniform of the 
White Cuirassiers. He made something of a 
sensation. The white and gold uniform was 
splendid among the black coats with the 
sprinkling of red. Pat danced the night 
through, with a grace and elegance which put 
the Englishmen out of court. Diana did not 
dance. It was one of the feminine graces 
which had not appealed to Denis Markham. 
He was at her side after every dance and only 
her kind insistence sent him away from her. 

She felt proud of Pat that night. So many 
very exclusive people were curious about Pat 
and eager to know him. The crown was put 
on his social success when the Duchess of St. 
Bees, a hook-nosed old lady with dingy skin 
and a gown out of fashion this many a year, 


184 


The 111 Omen 


asked to be introduced to him, and sat holding 
his hand for quite a perceptible length of time. 

“I hear you’re going to be married, my 
dear,” she said. “I hope you’ll be very happy. 
When will you come to lunch with me?” 

These last days dragged for Pat despite the 
good will and the business and the time he 
spent by Diana’s side. He was impatient for 
the wedding-day. His leaping pulses kept 
saying to the minutes: “Hurry! Hurry!” but 
the clock of Time moved no faster. 

Sometimes Diana would send him away from 
her, and then he would be at a loose end, not 
knowing what to do with himself. Once or 
twice he went off to lunch with the Harlands 
and got through the time pleasantly enough. 
There was something about the unexacting 
hospitality, where he was free to come as he 
would, go as he would, which he found sooth- 
ing. 

After one of those banishments Diana had 
a compensation for him. She disappeared 
after dinner, leaving Pat to be amused by Mrs. 
Frith, who hardly spoke to him, but left him 
free to read the Times or try to read it. The 


The 111 Omen 


185 


Times was too much for Pat in these days. It 
seemed an endless length of time before Diana 
came back. 

Pat looked round eagerly as she came. Then 
he uttered an exclamation. She was wearing 
her wedding-gown and veil. The white satin 
flowed about her in regal profusion. She 
stood shy and smiling, and the mood was a 
delightful one in Diana who was not often shy. 

She advanced down the long room till she 
paused under the great chandelier which hung 
midway. The light was flung down on the 
white satin and lace, turning it golden. There 
was a wreath of orange blossoms on her black 
hair. The veil fell over her shoulders and 
about her face, softening her beauty. 

Pat forgot the presence of Mrs. Frith, cold, 
unfriendly, by the shaded lamp. He eluded 
Max, who had forgiven him by this time the 
somewhat inexplicable intimacy with his mis- 
tress. He caught the bride in his arms and held 
her fast despite her half -laughing protesta- 
tions that he was ruining her dress. 

Pat relinquished her after that first embrace, 
and remembering the knitting Fate, turned to 


186 


The 111 Omen 


her corner with a shy, laughing apology, push- 
ing back with both hands the great dog who 
was bounding on him as though it were a game 
in which he must have a part. 

“Down, Max!” he said. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. 
Frith. I was taken by surprise.” 

He was arrested by the shocked horror on 
Mrs. Frith’s face. She was looking from one 
to the other. 

“You oughtn’t to have done it, Diana,” she 
said. “You know it is most unlucky.” 

“I forgot,” Diana said, picking up her long 
satin train and running away, still flushed and 
laughing, in the mood in which one hardly 
recognized her. 

Pat sat down, with the dog’s head on his 
knees, and argued with Mrs. Frith against 
believing in superstition. There had been so 
much concern for him in her horrified look that 
he no longer felt afraid of her chilliness. But 
she was not to be argued out of this super- 
stition. 

“I can only say that I wish Diana had not 
done it,” she said with her air of settled gloom. 


The 111 Omen 


187 


“1 have known it to happen before and it al- 
ways brought ill-luck.” 

When Diana came back in her ordinary at- 
tire she went away and left them. 

“She thinks the marriage will never take 
place,” Diana said. “Esther was as bad.” 
Esther was Miss Markham’s maid. “Do you 
know that I dressed myself, Pat : but I had to 
ring for Esther to fasten me up. I thought 
she’d have dropped when she came in.” 

“I shall be your maid, presently,” said Pat; 
and laughed somewhat shyly. Diana was go- 
ing on her honeymoon without a maid, one of 
the oddities in her that puzzled the good folk 
of Saxham. The thought of acting as Di’s 
maid was almost too much for Pat. Every- 
thing feminine had for him the mystery and 
the charm they have for the youth who has 
never had sisters, never been accustomed to the 
feminine belongings. He would handle 
Diana’s pretty fripperies with an awe and a 
delight that amused her. 

“You shall brush my hair for me, Pat,” she 
said. “It is very long and thick. If you pull 
it you shall never brush it any more.” 


188 


The III Omen 


“You darling!” cried Pat in an ecstasy. He 
had a vision of Diana sitting before the glass 
in the room which was to be hers at Grayes 
and he brushing out her lovely hair. The new 
coquetry in her was delightful to Pat. 

“I warn you that I shall take a long time to 
do it,” he said. “I shall want to hide my face 
in it, to kiss it all the time.” 

And then he caught her in his arms and 
kissed her. 

The infrequent mood in her came to an end. 

“Don’t, Pat,” she said almost petulantly. 

The little Sevres clock on the mantelpiece 
tinkled out ten silvery strokes. 

“You must go, Pat,” she said, still keeping 
him at arm’s length. 

“Just three days more and I shall not go,” 
he said, looking at her ardently across the few 
feet of carpet beyond which she had retreated. 

“I don’t know what is the matter with me 
to-night,” she said, and her voice was suddenly 
weary. “I do such foolish things.” 

He went unwillingly at last. The night was 
very dark and he was hardly outside the lodge- 
gates of Broom Hall before he began to be 


The III Omen 


189 


curiously afraid. Supposing that something 
were to happen to him now; supposing he were 
to die now, to-night, and never, after all, have 
Diana for his own! The thought sent through 
him a pang of intolerable fear. He might have 
died last year and it would have been no such 
matter. He would never have known what he 
had missed. But to die now, with his life’s joy 
almost within his grasp: that was too terrible 
to be thought of. 

Some one in ages long since had planted the 
narrow road between Broom Hall and Grayes 
not only with beech and ash and oak, but with 
a long line of Norway spruce firs inside a holly 
hedge which made the road sunken as between 
walls and airless unless the wind swept down 
it. There was not a star in the dark sky over- 
head. The road under the mare’s feet had to 
be felt and not seen. 

Pat began to sing in order to throw off the 
fear, which had visited him more or less of 
late, every time he had had to leave Diana, but 
never so acutely as to-night. He hated the 
fear that was making a coward of him in the 
dark. He was afraid of himself, afraid of the 


190 


The III Omen 


cowardice. He said to himself that if any one 
was to creep on him out of the darkness with a 
knife he would be unable to resist, so paralyz- 
ing was the fear. 

So he sang. It was a German student-song 
of love and wine, and it had a rollicking music 
and Pat had a rich young voice. 

The road closed in narrower and narrower 
and the darkness was thicker. Usually after a 
time out-of-doors at night, one begins to see 
like a cat in the dark. But Pat could see noth- 
ing. The planter of those trees long ago had 
made an impenetrable shade. 

Now he was almost clear of them — at last. 
His heart began to lift. What had be been 
afraid of? He was as foolish as the unfriendly, 
knitting Fate, who had prophesied ill-luck be- 
cause Di had had the delightful thought of 
showing herself to her bride-groom in her wed- 
ding-gown. 

There was a light ahead now — the light of 
the cottage at Golden Green where the district 
nurse lived. No matter how late Pat came in 
sight of it there was always a light in the cot- 
tage-pane. Just before that point the line of 


The 111 Omen 


191 


Norway spruce firs ended: the road widened 
out. 

The student song was done and Pat had 
changed into the Song of the Three Students 
and the Landlord’s Fair Daughter — a mourn- 
ful song: but Pat’s spirits had gone up. He 
was out of the dark road. There would be 
only to-morrow and the next day. The next 
would be his wedding-day. He could afford 
to sing a melancholy song now. 

The light dazzled him, bright after the pit 
of darkness. The mare’s hoofs beat in time to 
the song. Pat rose in his stirrups, his heart 
suddenly exalted within him. 

“Only three days ; the nights are short,” he 
shouted, stopping midway in the song of 
Heine. Then — what had happened? The 
mare stumbled: there was something: Pat was 
down with a crash, the triumphant words half 
spoken on his lips. The mare had rolled com- 
pletely over, flinging Pat wide of her hoofs 
indeed, but on to a convenient heap of stones 
laid ready for road-making. The ill-luck had 
not delayed in coming. 


CHAPTER XIII 

THE NIGHT OF LOVE 

*Jf there had not been an encampment of 
gypsies at the other end of Saxham, and 
if they had not turned out their animals to 
graze, and if the old donkey had not chosen to 
lie down and sleep right in the midst of the 
roadway, Pat’s history might have been very 
different. 

The accident occurred only a few yards from 
the district nurse’s house. She was beside Pat 
before the mare had scrambled to her feet and 
galloped away home. In fact she was just in 
time to draw Pat out of the track of the 
mare’s hoofs before she got herself up and 
went tearing along like a whirlwind. The 
donkey, quite unconscious of the mischief he 
had done, rolled over in his sleep a little more 
out of the way of creatures that would have the 
middle of the road to themselves. 

To explain how Mrs. Noyes came to have 
Pat a whole night to herself requires a certain 
amount of filling in. Pat was late on this 
132 


The Night of Love 


193 


occasion and it was part of his considerateness 
for the servants that he had arranged that no 
one should wait up for him. Item — the lodge 
gate was left unlocked so that he should not 
have to disturb the lodge-keeper, an old pen- 
sioner. Item, Pat preferred to put up the 
mare himself. She was short-tempered with 
grooms and stable-hands, though she would 
run to Pat and nuzzle her head in his breast 
with a little cry as soon as she saw him. 

It was not until near breakfast time at 
Grayes that Pat’s absence was discovered by 
the presence of the mare grazing in the Park 
just within the lodge gates. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Noyes had been having the 
hour she had desired for more than twenty 
years, although like many boons, eagerly 
prayed for, it had come in a shape she would 
not have chosen. 

The light of the lamp in her window il- 
lumined the road just beyond where the don- 
key had been overcome with sleep. The light in 
fact, had proved a siren’s light to lure Pat to 
destruction, since if it had not been for its 
puzzling brilliancy he might have discovered 


194 


The Night of Love 


in time, or the mare might have discovered 
for him the presence of the donkey where it 
lay impeding the free passage of the road. 

The first thing Mrs. Noyes did after coming 
upon Pat was to fly back to the cottage for a 
mattress. She got him upon this without any 
great difficulty, for she was trained to lift even 
heavier burdens than Pat. She was aware of 
a dark stain in the road where his head had 
lain after he had rolled into the road bringing 
with him some of the stones upon which he had 
been flung. There was blood on her hands as 
she lifted his head. She had her nerves more 
under command than the woman who is not 
trained to nurse, and though she was wild with 
fear and compassion, she went steadily about 
what she was doing as though she had not a 
nerve in her whole body. 

Having settled the unconscious Pat upon 
the mattress, she proceeded to drag it to the 
cottage, along the intervening space of road, 
over the grass by the roadside, in at the little 
garden gate. 

She did it all quietly and stealthily. Most 
women would have gone for help. The 


The Night of Love 


195 


scattered cottages at this end of the village 
began very soon after one passed the district 
nurse’s little house. She never thought of 
looking for help. She had had a good training 
in a London hospital, and it had made her 
despise the local doctor, who was a fussy little 
man who had somehow scraped through a good 
degree and had done nothing since to justify it. 

She looked stealthily up and down the road. 
There was not likely to be any one about. 
Golden Green was a Sleepy Hollow where 
every one went to bed at ten o’clock. 

Having got the mattress through the door 
and the tiny hall into her little bedroom, she 
proceeded to lock the outside door and close 
the shutters, things she was never accustomed 
to do. Indeed, her open windows were a cause 
of amazement to Golden Green, which was 
wont to prophesy that Mrs. Noyes would be 
bludgeoned to death in her bed some night 
by some miscreant or other. The open win- 
dows they held were a tempting of Providence. 
Since Golden Green was miles away from a 
main road, and had had no more serious crime 
within its borders for many years than a piece 


196 


The Night of Love 


of linen stolen off a hedge where it had been 
left to dry, Mrs. Noyes took her chance. 
Perhaps she was one of those who are beyond 
the hopes and fears of their fellow-creatures 
• — “fallen too low for special fear.” 

Having secured the house she knelt by the 
mattress and examined Pat’s injuries. There 
was a deep wide cut at the back of his head 
from which the blood was oozing in a steady 
thick flow. Her lips were wry as she 
examined the wound. Serious — oh yes, it 
was very serious — dangerous even. His skull 
might be fractured. It might be to all intents 
and purposes a dead Pat who was lying there 
so white and still, a line of dull light showing 
under the half-closed lids — terribly like a dead 
person whose lids have not been closed in 
time. 

There was nothing Dr. Devane could do 
that she could not do. If the skull was frac- 
tured Pat was beyond all their help. 
To-morrow would do for the expert aid that 
would no doubt be forthcoming. 

She moved Pat gently while she washed the 
wound and applied antiseptics. His bonny 


The Night of Love 


197 


hair was covered with the dust and grit of the 
road matted with blood. She washed it away 
before bandaging the wound. 

Her own low truckle bed stood by the 
wall. She made it, with clean sheets and 
pillow-cases as though she were not wild with 
fear. Her hands would shake and her teeth 
chatter as she spread the sheets and turned 
back the blankets. That done she began to 
undress Pat. She had a horrible feeling that 
he began to be rigid as she unlaced his boots 
and drew them off, drew off the socks — they 
were of dove-grey silk and their delicate fop- 
pishness hurt the woman’s heart. When the 
feet were bare she strained them to her breast 
with a maternal passion, stooping to kiss them 
as though they were the feet of the Son of 
God. When last she had seen those feet they 
had been the beautiful feet of a baby who 
had never worn boots or shoes to cramp the 
delicate shape with its wonderful mechanism, 
the miracle of poise and spring. Her little 
son’s feet had grown to be a man’s feet since 
she had seen them last, but they were beautiful 


198 


The Night of Love 


still, high-arched and fine — those feet that 
carried Pat’s gracious young body with such 
a springing ease. 

With the same air of reverent and sorrow- 
ful passion she undressed Pat to his last gar- 
ment. For just this night he was hers — not 
his bride’s, not the man’s who had refused her 
prayer for a sight of him long ago before she 
sank into the gulf of the world. Only hers as he 
had been hers when he had lain in her arms, 
between the lavender-scented sheets in an old 
Surrey house years ago. 

With careful dexterity she got Pat on to 
her bed. The mattress had a deep purple 
stain where his head had lain. She avoided 
looking at it till she had settled Pat in bed. 
The young body was very unyielding in her 
arms. It had no more flexibility as she moved 
it than a dead thing. 

He was not dead — his heart yet beat with a 
fitful, difficult beat. She lifted his eyelid and 
looked at the eye. He was quite unconscious. 

Mechanically she set things in order. She 
sponged the blood-stained mattress and car- 
ried it away to another room. She emptied 


The Night of Love 


199 


the basin which she had used for washing Pat’s 
wound: laid on one side neatly the roll of 
bandage, the antiseptics, the scissors — all the 
appliances of her nurse’s business. She got 
into her nurse’s print gown: put on the cap 
over her abundant hair still pretty, and sat 
down to keep watch by Pat till morning. 

She sat holding his inert hand pressed 
against her breast, where it seemed to satisfy 
some hunger which had been with her all those 
years. She doted with her eyes on his face. 
Sometimes she stooped and kissed him, for the 
child he had been and the boy he had been and 
the man he was : for all the many years she had 
not seen him. She said to herself that God 
would have been more merciful than Cuthbert 
had been. She went back to the visit he had 
paid her after she had come out of prison, a 
visit so dreadful to him that she knew only a 
painful conscientiousness could have induced 
him to face it. 

She remembered the dreary London 
“apartments,” in which the interview had 
taken place. She could see the room crowded 
with unnecessary debased chairs and tables 


200 


The Night of Love 


and cabinets and all sorts of lumber. There 
were texts on the wall, which fact had not 
prevented her ladyship’s brow-beating and 
cheating her. There had been artificial 
flowers everywhere, bunches of dried pampas 
grasses, with dusty poppies stuck in. Arti- 
ficial crabs and beetles had adhered to the 
dingy curtains. There was a handful of fire 
in the grate. The landlady charged for the 
coal by the scuttleful, which she said was the 
most honest way. The infinitesimal scuttle 
was no sooner full than it was empty. 

She remembered that Cuthbert had stum- 
bled over a footstool as he came in. The 
room had a superfluity of footstools. At any 
other moment she must have laughed as she 
had always laughed at the brother-in-law who 
had never approved of her. But the sight of 
his mourning hurled her down to a depth of 
remembrance in which laughter was a horror. 

He had come to offer her a small compe- 
tence, which would set her beyond the reach of 
want. He had avoided looking at her as he 
spoke, standing, smoothing his hat with a 
nervous gesture, very near the door. 


The Night of Love 


201 


He had not spoken exactly what was in his 
mind: but she had understood it. He was 
offering her what would put her beyond the 
necessity of stealing for her living or getting 
it in any other discreditable way. She had all 
but answered him as a decent woman might, 
but she had been brought to a sense of what 
she was by the contrast between her attire and 
Cuthbert’s, which she seemed to have noticed 
for the first time. She was wearing colors, 
one of her dresses in that other life which lay 
such an incredible distance away from this. 
She had not had time or money to provide 
herself with her widow’s weeds. Perhaps she 
had had no inclination. When a woman has 
murdered her husband, more cruelly killing 
the heart and soul in him than if she had 
pulled the trigger of the pistol with which he 
blew out his brains, she need not add to her 
crime the hypocrisy of wearing widow’s weeds 
for him. 

She had listened to Cuthbert Luttrell, 
standing opposite to him, her head bent, one 
hand resting on the table, her air that of a 
chidden child. She did not know that the 


202 


The Night of Love 


man had glanced at her, with a wonder that 
anything so vile could look so young and inno- 
cent. 

She neither accepted nor rejected his bene- 
faction. She listened to him, not speaking, 
while he told her that she could draw on his 
bankers for fifty pounds every quarter. 

“It is not very much,” he said: “but you 
will be living in retirement. If you do not find 
it sufficient for your needs you will let me 
know.” 

“Thank you,” she had said: “it will be quite 
sufficient. It’s very good of you to think of 
it.” 

Then, as he turned towards the door, she had 
broken out in a wild prayer that she might see 
Pat. She had forgotten everything but the 
urgency of her need. She had always wanted 
things so intensely, — not lukewarmly like 
other people. His face had hardened, and he 
had pushed her from him as she fell on her 
knees and clasped his. He was the man to 
detest thoroughly all extreme manifestations 
of emotion. 

“You have forfeited your right,” he said. 


The Night of Love 


203 


“You always hated me,” she accused him, 
getting to her feet and turning away from him 
towards the window. 

She had not seen the shocked look on his 
face — had not known how that speech of hers 
would have power to fret and gall a sensitive 
nature during all the years since. 

“Think!” he had said hurriedly, — “Pat has 
forgotten you. Is it worth while to wake his 
memories? He is so little. When he is older 
he can believe you dead.” 

“I might see him asleep,” she pleaded, turn- 
ing towards him with fresh hope. Hope was 
always ready to waken in her heart. 

But that was impossible. Pat was not with 
his uncle, but in the charge of friends. 

“At such a tender age, he needs a woman’s 
love and care,” he said clumsily, with no 
thought of lacerating her heart. 

Then he had gone away. She had tried 
once more — only once more, when Pat was 
about ten. 

“What is the use?” Cuthbert Luttrell had 
written. “My dear nephew is happy. He is 
not in this country. I pray he may not return 


204 


The Night of Love 


to it. If it is any satisfaction to you to know 
it, he is being excellently cared for. I have 
tried as far as possible to cut the connection 
between him and England. I forbid myself 
the pleasure of seeing him. As for you, it is 
impossible.” 

Well — she had waited for her hour and her 
hour had come. For all one night Pat should 
be hers as he had been when he was a little 
baby. He would not shrink from her: he 
would not look at her with horror, with amaze- 
ment as he had sometimes looked in her 
dreams. Her little boy would not be hard to 
her. 

Some time in the early morning she stood 
up from where she had knelt all night, clasp- 
ing Pat’s hand to her breast, and opened the 
shutters and the windows. The cold light of a 
green dawn, not yet streaked with rose, came 
into the room. She extinguished the gutter- 
ing lamp, and sat down to wait till it should 
be time to send for help. The night was all 
but over : she had had her hour. 

Sooner than she had anticipated the quiet- 
ness in which there was only Pat and herself 


The Night of Love 


205 


and God was broken in upon by a sharp rap- 
ping at the door. Opening it she saw old 
Sprunt, the road-man in these parts. 

“There Ve been murder done, Nurse Noyes,” 
he said, his teeth chattering in his head. 
“There be a pool o’ blood big as my ’ead in 
the middle o’ the road.” 

“A gentleman has been injured,” she said 
quietly. “He is in here. I have attended to 
him. He is the young gentleman from 
Grayes, I think. His horse stumbled over 
something in the road and flung him on his 
head. Will you take a message to Grayes?” 

“Dear, dear! Eve of his weddin’, too,” 
said the old man. “ ’Tis what I’ve often 
’eard, — ’ere to-day and gone to-morrer — 
many’s the slip twixt cup an’ lip. They’ll be 
in a rare state over to Grayes. I’ll ask my 
Missus for a cup o’ tea and orf I starts. She 
be ’ard to wake, my missus.” 

“I’ll give you a cup of tea,” Mrs. Noyes 
said. “Come in while I make it.” 

She opened the door of the neat little 
kitchen and old Sprunt followed her within. 
She had kept the fire going all night and now 


206 


The Night of Love 


the kettle was singing on the stove. She 
moved about quietly getting some breakfast 
for the old man before he should start out for 
Grayes. All the time she kept saying to her- 
self that her hour with Pat was come and 
gone. She hardly cared or was curious 
because in a little while the seclusion of twenty 
years should be broken in upon by the man 
she feared and dreaded beyond any man on 
earth. 


CHAPTER XIV 

THE SENTENCE 

*Jn the light of the early morning, birds 
singing, the sun shining, a fresh west 
wind blowing in at the open windows, Pat 
lay motionless as he had lain last night, 
ghastly under his bandages, but still living. 
She had felt for his heart. The pulsation 
was, if anything, a little stronger. 

The curious unreality of morning light lay 
over everything. The mists were yet rising 
from the earth. Her little garden, gay with 
spring blossoms — she was a tireless gardener 
and gave all her leisure to her plot — was like 
a garden seen in a picture. Looking at it 
with tired eyes, she had a momentary thought 
of how she had loved to tend the little lives 
in it as though they were the lives of children. 

She heard the jingle and clatter of a car- 
riage and pair coming down the road. She 
went to the door and opened it. No one else 
would come so early but the man for whom 
she had sent. A tremor ran through her 
207 


208 


The Sentence 


frame. She had lived so long alone with God 
and herself. In the solitude she had learned, 
as a fine saying has it, to fear God, but not 
to be afraid of Him. If she had been inex- 
plicably wicked to the rest of the world she 
had learnt the sweetness of turning in appeal 
to the One who had made her. 

She kissed Pat full on the lips with a pas- 
sion that might have drawn his soul back from 
the threshold over which it hovered. Her 
baby! Her beautiful boy! The carriage had 
stopped. Steps were coming down the gar- 
den path, were at the door. Some one 
knocked. “Come in,” she said and stood up 
the other side of Pat, as though Pat were her 
shield and defence, as he might have been but 
for her sin, to meet the eyes of her enemy. 

He did not see her at first, but had dropped 
down on his knees by Pat, with an inarticulate 
moan. She was horrified at the ravages the 
years and illness and trouble had made in his 
face, in his bent figure. Was that also to be 
laid at her door? Oh her sin, her sin! Would 
the consequences of it never cease, but go on 
widening over the waves of the world? 


The Sentence 


209 


“Is he dead?” Cuthbert Mayne, who had 
once been Cuthbert Luttrell, asked, looking 
up with dazed eyes at the woman who was a 
nurse and so could speak authoritatively of 
life and death. 

“He is not dead,” she said. “I have done 
all possible.” 

She had spoken almost in a whisper, but 
he looked up at her. The room was bright 
now with the day, and though she shrank 
back, covering her face with her hands, there 
was no shadow to hide, to cover her. 

“You!” said Cuthbert Mayne. “You!” 

She drew her hands from before her face 
with difficulty. 

“Yes, it is I,” she said humbly. “I have 
been district-nurse here these ten years back. 
No one can say I have not done my duty, a 
hard duty often.” 

He looked at her with the old air of horror. 
No matter what she did — how she suffered, 
how she atoned, Cuthbert would always look 
at her with horror. It was well God was so 
much more merciful than men. And Harry 
— Harry had always loved her so much. 


210 


The Sentence 


Surely where he was Harry would look at her 
from God’s side of things, would love her and 
forgive her though she had murdered him. 

“You have no right to be here,” he said. 
“You, of all people, have no right to be here.” 

“You are very hard, Cuthbert,” she 
answered in an unresentful tone. “If I had 
not been here Pat would have lain where the 
horse flung him last night. I have done all 
possible ” 

“Last night,” he repeated. “How was it 
you sent no word? How do I know that you 
knew what to do? You may have killed him 
by the delay in sending for a doctor.” 

“Oh no,” she said quietly. “No one could 
do more than I have done. I was used to 
accidents at St. George’s. You would not let 
me see him, Cuthbert, but I have had him to 
myself all one night. God has been more 
merciful than you. I have had him for all 
one night. But I would not have hurt him for 
that. I would not have hurt one hair of his 
precious head for that.” 

“How do I know what you would or would 
not do?” he asked, with a harsh contempt. 


The Sentence 


211 


“I’ve sent for Dr. Devane. As soon as the 
post-office is open I will telegraph to Bards- 
ley. I will ask him to bring down a nurse 
with him.” 

“Here?” she said, with a wondering air. 

“He shall be removed as soon as possible. 
Meanwhile — you could turn out, I suppose. 
There are other cottages. It need not be a 
question of expense.” 

“Don’t send me away, Cuthbert,” she 
prayed in a flurry. “It can do no harm as 
long as he is unconscious. No one will nurse 
him as I will. I am a very clever nurse. 
They said at St. George’s that I was throwing 
myself away, coming down here. No one can 
care as I do.” 

“Here is Devane, thank God,” he said, 
turning from her as though he had not heard 
her. 

The fussy little man came in fussily. He 
felt for Pat’s heart, his pulse, lifted an eyelid 
as Mrs. Noyes had done last night. He 
unwound the bandages and looked at the 
wound, felt about it with his stubby fingers. 


212 


The Sentence 


“There is no fracture as far as I can ascer- 
tain,” he said. “The wound would account 
for the unconsciousness.” 

He heaped coals of fire on the woman’s 
head. She had always been somewhat con- 
temptuous of his attainments, though she had 
never betrayed it. 

“Nurse Noyes will do all that is needful,” 
he said handsomely. “She knows her business 
with any one. Golden Green is very fortunate 
to have her.” 

She had stood nervously clasping and 
unclasping her hands, shrinking back and 
leaving the doctor to his examination. Now 
she went with the habit of the trained nurse 
and brought the doctor a basin of water, soap, 
and a clean towel for his hands. 

As she came she heard her sentence spoken 
— heard her reprieve. 

“Move him; — certainly not,” said Dr. 
Devane. “He is not in a fit state to be moved. 
He could not be in better hands. No change 
of nurses, please, Mr. Mayne. Nurse Noyes 
understands me and I her. I presume that I 
shall be in charge of the case, though I shall 


The Sentence 


213 


be pleased, of course, to meet Sir Thomas 
Bardsley in consultation.” 

He happened to look towards Mrs. Noyes 
at the moment and was startled by the strange 
look she sent him. Was it delight, gratitude, 
amazement? Mrs. Noyes felt as though she 
must kneel and kiss the little man’s feet. 
Was it possible she had ever been unkind, con- 
temptuous in her thoughts of him? She was 
looking at him with parted lips. It struck 
Dr. Devane — for the first time — that the dis- 
trict nurse was a very attractive woman. He 
had thought of her as odd and flighty, although 
very competent. Why did those odd blue 
eyes of hers thank him as though for a mercy? 

“Fortunately we are very free of sickness 
just now,” he said. “There will be no diffi- 
culty about Nurse Noyes undertaking the 
cure. I don’t want a strange woman. Nurse 
Noyes and I have worked together for many 
years.” 

Later came Sir Thomas Bardsley in his 
motor-car. He confirmed Dr. Devane in the 
belief that there was no fracture. Bad con- 
cussion, most likely: and the wound was a very 


214 


The Sentence 


nasty one. There were no traces of injury 
about the body. If it had not been for the 
heap of stones left there for the road-mending 
Pat might have escaped scot-free. 

Mrs. Noyes left Cuthbert Mayne in 
charge %f Pat while she saw to her few 
patients ip th£* village. What a mercy! 
What a mercy that she had so few cases! 
A rodent ulcer to dress, an arthritis case 
to massage, a new mother and baby to 
be attended to. It was all done by eleven 
o’clock, and she was back again in the cot- 
tage, hanging up her cloak, laying away her 
bonnet in the clean bare little room in the 
gable which she kept for a stray visitor, a nurse 
from her old hospital, some one out of the town 
life there who wanted country air and quiet- 
ness. 

Cuthbert Mayne sat motionless by the head 
of Pat’s bed. He had not stirred since she 
had left him. There was no change in Pat. 
He lay still, keeping his air of deadly rigidity. 
There was no trace in the woman, as she came 
in, of the painful things she had been doing. 
They had hardly become less painful through 


The Sentence 


215 


the years. She brought in an air of clean 
freshness with her as she came, wearing her 
stiffly starched white dress, a silver belt con- 
fining her slender waist. 

Cuthbert Mayne looked up at her. Her 
hair half -silver, half-gold, curled under her 
cap. Her cheek was still smooth and pink. 
What right had she to look like that — to be a 
pretty woman, after all the desolation she had 
wrought ? The thought of Harry in his grave 
these twenty years back hardened his brother’s 
heart. Something in her air suggested that 
joy was not far off, might break out in little 
bubbles of delight for a very little cause. 

“You understand that it is only for the 
present,” he said, standing up and leaning on 
his stick like an old man. “When Pat is well 
again either you or we clear out.” 

The subtle foreshadowing of joy in her face 
which had maddened him died from it. 

“I quite understand,” she said, meekly. 

He went away without a thought of com- 
punction towards her. He had been thinking 
about Father Peter. Had he known that she 
was there? He had had an idea that Father 


216 


The Sentence 


Peter kept track of her all those years. He 
remembered something about the old priest’s 
expression when he had first heard of the pur- 
chase of Grayes. He ought to have warned 
him. He was angry with Father Peter. 
The woman ought to have been bought off, 
sent packing. Wasn’t the world wide enough 
for her but she must sit there at Pat’s gates? 

The Harlands too! What elfish trick of 
the Fates had brought them all together in 
this quiet green spot? He might have seen 
more in it than that : but he was not a religious 
man. He had forsworn the somewhat narrow 
tenets in which he had been brought up and 
had not replaced them. The Fates played one 
such tricks. One had only to frustrate the 
Fates as well as might be with what weapons 
one had. 

He said to himself as he drove on his way 
to Broom Hall that before Pat brought his 
bride to Grayes Mrs. Noyes must be cleared 
out. Impossible that she should cast her bale- 
ful shadow over Pat’s married life, over his 
children. 


The Sentence 


217 


He thought bitterly of Harry’s marriage, 
and the curse it had brought in his train. A 
little witch of a girl first seen at a London 
railway station, and followed home by the 
romantic lad in his teens just down from 
Oxford for the Easter vacation. 

A scrambled-up acquaintance. Harry had 
spoken to the girl’s mother, who was a typist 
in a City office. She and the girl had met 
almost at the steps of the dreary house up 
Kensal way. Harry had joined them with a 
petition to be allowed to paint the girl just 
emerging from childhood. 

That was the beginning of it. The wise 
elder brother had not liked it, but he had not 
opposed it. He had hoped that Harry would 
forget the girl when the long vacation was 
over. He had accompanied him to the house 
and made the acquaintance of the mother and 
daughter. He liked the mother better than 
the daughter, though he acknowledged that 
she looked like an angel, especially when she 
sang. She was a musician. She had been 
carrying her portfolio, returning home from 


218 


The Sentence 


the Academy of Music, that ill-fated day when 
Harry had first laid eyes on her. 

Cuthbert Mayne’s thoughts went on from 
one bitterness to another. He had often asked 
himself since if by any manner of means he 
could have persuaded or restrained Harry 
from marrying her. 

He had judged her hardly from the first. 
She had had a singularly dreary life in the 
dreary lodgings, and she was as greedy for 
sunshine as the bee for flowers. Pleasure- 
loving Cuthbert Mayne had pronounced her: 
and had been shocked with something of the 
narrowness of the tenets he had rejected cling- 
ing to him, at the way she went about with 
Harry, a chance acquaintance, to theaters, to 
restaurants and picture-galleries, for country 
jaunts. He had said to himself that it must 
all end when Harry went back to Oxford. It 
was a boyish folly. Harry would find out 
that the girls, the women, who counted, did not 
do these things. The tired, invertebrate 
mother seemed to have no idea of looking after 
her little girl; Cuthbert hardly blamed her. 
The little person, of whom Cuthbert never 


The Sentence 


219 


thought without a belittling epithet, ruled the 
mother, not the mother her. The mother 
spent her hard-won earnings on decking her 
little girl in strange artistic colors and stuffs 
which Cuthbert, with the strain of his Puritan 
ancestry in him, thought highly unbecoming. 

He had waited, putting in a wise word now 
and again with Harry. The wise words had 
no more weight than if they had been foolish. 
It came upon him like a thunderbolt, when 
Harry announced his marriage — from a cot- 
tage in Devonshire where the honeymoon was 
being spent. 

“I saw that you were against it,” he wrote, 
“so it was no use talking till it was done. 
Once it is done you will stand by us. You 
have but to know Milly ” 

Cuthbert Mayne chewed over again the cud 
of old bitterness as his horses carried him along 
to Broom Hall. He wrung the utmost bitter- 
ness out of the fate the woman had brought 
upon himself, dispossessing him of his home — - 
forcing him to live under an assumed name, to 
shrink from the eyes of his fellow-creatures. 


220 


The Sentence 


Ah! — he suddenly sat bolt upright in the 
carriage under the spur of a thought which had 
come to him. Why, he need not have feared 
that she might be obstinate, might refuse to 
go. There were the Harlands! Surely she 
would run into a mouse-hole to avoid them. 
Shameless as she might be, she would certainly 
not wish to stay in the place where at any 
moment she might meet the Harlands and be 
recognized by them. The Fates had played a 
trick too many and had delivered her into his 
hands. If they had meant to give another 
turn of the screw, to cause him another pang, 
another fear, they had over-reached them- 
selves. Milly Luttrell would fly from the 
chance of an encounter with the Harlands, 
however she might desire to stay in the neigh- 
borhood of her son. 

The news had not reached Broom Hall. 
Cuthbert Mayne was shown into the drawing- 
room where presently Diana came to him, her 
hands full of letters to be answered. 

“I come to make Pat’s apologies,” he said, 
casting about in his mind how he should 
break the news to her. It meant the post- 


The Sentence 


221 


ponement of the wedding — at least. What 
else there might be, God knew. What a tale 
to bring to a bride two days before her wed- 
ding! 

Was it possible there was something of relief 
in Diana’s expression as she answered him 
gaily that she supposed Pat would come later, 
adding that he really left her no time to attend 
to a thousand and one things. 

“He is thoroughly unreasonable, ’’she said. 
“Do come and sit down and tell me what he 
is doing.” 

Of course it was not possible that she was 
relieved at Pat’s absence. Cuthbert Mayne 
put the thought away from him as incredible. 
His imagination had played him a trick, that 
was all. 

“Dear child!” he said, and began clumsily 
and kindly to tell her of Pat’s accident. He 
stood, holding her hand, watching her face 
while he told her. After the first there was no 
need for subterfuge or concealment. She had 
turned very pale, but she showed no sign of 
fainting — none of tears. 

“My Pat!” she said. “May I see him?” 


222 


The Sentence 


Impossible to doubt the tenderness of her 
voice. An odd trick his eyesight or his fancy 
had played him! He was grateful to her that 
she had not screamed nor fainted. 

“You are such a brave girl, Diana,” he said, 
“that I think you may see him. You will not 
be shocked at bandages — at unconsciousness?” 

“I think I can bear it,” she returned. 

It was only afterwards, that, extolling 
Diana’s courage and self-control to himself, 
a little uneasiness crept into his satisfaction be- 
cause she had borne it too well. 


CHAPTER XV 

TWILIGHT 

CJome time in the middle of the night Mrs. 

Noyes dozed in her chair by Pat’s bed. 
She had taken off her stiff nurse’s dress and 
cap, had got into a loosely flowing gown — had 
loosened her hair from its tight coils, brushed 
it and plaited it in a long thick braid that hung 
below her waist. 

With the easing of her bonds she seemed 
to have laid away the burden of the years. As 
her head, propped on her hand, leant to one 
side in the chair and the long plait fell over 
her shoulders she looked in the lamplight al- 
most weirdly young. The weary woman 
might have slipped away in the night, and the 
girl, with the experiences of the years as yet 
unwritten in her face, have taken her place. 

The dawn was struggling with the lamplight 
in the room when something was said that 
brought the sleeping woman out of her dreams 
of more than twenty years ago to a reality of 
those days. 


223 


224 


“Mamma!” 

Surely some one had spoken. Not Pat. He 
lay as motionless as ever to all seeming: yet 
he must have stirred, for the bandage was 
pushed up on his forehead. Was it part of 
her dream that Pat, her little child, had called 
her by the old childish name? 

She knelt down beside the quiet figure and 
laid her cheek by Pat’s. The curling hair, 
which she held in so rigid a captivity all day 
that it might well have forgotten to curl, es- 
caped from its bonds and brushed Pat’s cheek 
like small caressing fingers. 

Hardly touching him she yet seemed to 
gather the whole young body close to her. She 
closed her eyes. She could remember the 
sultry August days, the drawn blinds, the feel 
of the clean sheets, the cool room where Milly 
Luttrell had lain with the young baby on her 
arm. She could smell the warm, clean smell 
of the little creature, newly-washed with deli- 
cately scented soap, and the clean freshly- 
aired clothes which had been dried on a lav- 
ender bush. Something of the weary ecstasy 
of those days came back to her, as she half- 


Twilight 


225 


slept, her head on Pat’s pillow, her cheek by 
his. In these quiet hours there was none to 
bid her stand apart from the child she had 
borne : none but God, and God had not spoken. 

Surely there was a movement of the inert 
figure, a whisper at her ear — so faint that it 
might have come back from the dreams where 
her feet wandered every night. 

“Mamma!” 

She started up and looked at Pat. His eyes 
were open. He knew her — not as Nurse 
Noyes, not as the woman of middle-age, with 
all her sins and her transgressions behind her, 
but as the young mother he had lost more than 
twenty years ago. 

He must have missed her somehow, for there 
was satisfaction in his faint smile. 

She fed him as the doctors had directed, and 
he slept again, but his sleep was natural; not 
the sleep of unconsciousness any more. 

So God had taken it out of all their hands. 
She had been willing to do as Cuthbert Mayne 
bade her, to steal away before Pat could be 
troubled by her shadow and lose herself again 
in the world. The rest and peace of her little 


226 


Twilight 


house and garden had grown dear to her. She 
had almost attained happiness there before Pat 
had come. The childish part of her, that would 
not be weighed down forever by a responsibility 
for the things she had done in that other life, 
had come to delight in all manner of things. 
She had learnt a passionate love for the quiet 
Nature that was laying healing touches on her 
heart and soul every day that passed. She 
had come to rejoice in the children and the 
flowers and the animals. She had come to love 
as though they were old children the grum- 
bling and aching old bodies she tended. 

The little house was consecrated by her 
prayers. She had prayed herself back to 
peace, for she could remember a time when 
there had been no rest for her. Her little 
house where she had been harmless and inno- 
cent, where the child had been coming back 
to her heart, turning out the woman who had 
known and done such things in some other 
world — it would have been hard to leave it. 
She had grown fond of the people, finding 
something to love even in the most trouble- 
some of her patients. 


Twilight 


227 


But she would have gone. She would have 
been quite submissive to Cuthbert’s will for her, 
though it should make her a Wandering Jew 
on the face of the earth with no rest for the 
sole of her foot. 

The dear snatched delight which had come 
to her this last year with those stolen glimpses 
of Pat : that, too, she must give up as something 
she had forfeited the right to, which she must 
lose as irretrievably as she had lost the dignity 
and the honor and the love which other women 
had and did not value, never having lost it. 

But now that she had been ready to give up 
— it was not God’s will to accept her sacrifice. 
The accident to Pat had given him back to her, 
a child as of old, who could no more accuse her 
than a child. 

Slowly Pat crept back to physical health. 
The wound healed satisfactorily — there was 
apparently no serious injury to the skull. The 
weeks passed and the bandages were off — no 
trace of the accident left but the terrible scar 
which the golden hair was growing over. The 
weeks grew to months: it was June where it 
had been April, and Pat once more walked 


228 


Twilight 


among men. But as a child. He had forgot- 
ten the happenings of his later years. There 
was nothing terrible about him. He was even 
more beautiful than of old with the strange 
innocence that had fallen upon him. 

“Who is that lady?” he asked, when he first 
saw Diana Markham after he had begun to 
get well: and was distressed, with the gentle- 
ness of the old Pat, when she wept, without 
associating her tears in any way with himself. 

Sir Thomas Bardsley had seen Pat once or 
twice, and they had had another opinion. Sir 
Thomas suspected some obscure injury to the 
brain. The other man, who was younger and 
had a steadily-growing reputation, suggested 
that the injury was probably in the nature of 
shock, something from which Pat would slowly 
recover. There was nothing but the loss of 
memory. Pat ate and drank, walked and 
talked like any ordinary mortal. But he had 
to begin acquaintance over again with all his 
world except the nurse whom he addressed 
childishly as “Mamma.” 

He did not even recognize Kitty Harland 
when he met her one day in the lanes, strug- 


Twilight 


229 


gling with her refractory Shetlands. And Kitty 
went home and wept to the dismay of her 
mother, who had no clue to the cause of her 
tears, and had not known that she possessed 
a weeping Kitty. 

Every one was very sympathetic with Pat 
in the strange thing that had befallen him, 
and with his uncle, whose devotion to him was 
an obvious and pathetic thing. 

A great many people called and left cards 
at Grayes in those days who had not been at 
the house since it had become Cuthbert 
Mayne’s property. They did not see Mr. 
Mayne except in the case of a special intimacy. 
Mr. Mayne’s invalidism by this time had taken 
a downward turn. “Not long for this world,” 
said Dr. Devane to Mrs. Wynne, to whom he 
would say things he would not to other ladies 
of the neighborhood. 

“And what is to become of Pat?” she asked 
in dismay. 

“As long as he is in his present state he 
wants no one but his nurse, ‘Mamma,’ as he 
calls her — and odd enough it sounds from a 
young six-footer who should have been married 


230 


Twilight 


two months ago. He is as dependent on her 
as a child. The old people in the village miss 
her dreadfully. The new nurse is as hard as 
nails.” 

“Dear me!” sighed Mrs. Wynne. “It is 
very sad, very sad. I wish we saw some light. 
And poor Diana!” 

“No one could expect a beautiful young 
woman like Miss Markham to be waiting on a 
lover who doesn’t know her, and may never 
know her, as far as I can see.” 

Every one was ready to be kind to Pat. 
Major Harland had re-introduced himself with 
no apparent sense of the oddity of it, and he 
came and took Pat for walks and drives. Pat 
never seemed to want his horses nowadays, and 
they thought it best to let his riding wait till 
he asked for it. Lord Halstead was another 
new-old friend who had begun all over again 
with Pat. Diana avoided Pat after the first, 
and no one thought it anything but natural 
that she could not endure those* strange, sad 
meetings. 

Mrs. Noyes kept in the background of things 
at Grayes. No one saw her, and when she left 


Twilight 


231 


the park walls to visit her own cottage she went 
closely veiled so that no one should see her 
face. 

Pat’s infatuation for his nurse, his curious 
way of addressing her, was known to very few, 
and those few were not likely to speak of it: 
till one day Lady Caroline Frayne forced her 
way in. It was always said of Lady Caroline 
when she was spoken of to a new-comer that 
she would do anything and say anything. 

It happened to be a day when Pat had one 
of the blinding headaches which were a result 
of his fall. He was not in the drawing-room, 
but in a long low room at the back of the house 
looking upon a maze of flower-beds, the green 
lawn, and the lake full of water-lilies beyond. 

Lady Caroline had found the hall-door open, 
as it often was. There was no one in the hall. 
She had never succeeded in penetrating the 
house in its present owner’s time, and the 
rumors which had reached her about Pat had 
excited her curiosity. 

There was no one about when she came in. 
The butler was still lingering over the servants’ 


232 


Twilight 


lunch in the kitchen, not dreaming of visitors 
at this hour. 

She peeped into the drawing-room: no one 
there. Into the dining-room. It was all tidy 
and in order. Apparently no one had lunched 
there, for it was barely half past two. She 
turned down a corridor off the hall, opened a 
door and found the object of her search. Pat 
was lying on a sofa with half-closed eyes. 
There was a smell of eau de Cologne and a 
damp handkerchief lay on his forehead. The 
room was in shadow, the blinds drawn to keep 
out the light. 

“Dear me, Mr. Mayne, I’m so glad to find 
you,” Lady Caroline said, drawing a chair be- 
side Pat’s sofa. “I hope you are really better 
by this time. Such sad circumstances . . . . ” 

Her eyes lit on the big bottle of eau de 
Cologne standing on a table close to Pat’s 
elbow, and she made a grab at it. 

“So refreshing, this hot day!” she said, pour- 
ing a large portion of the contents of the bottle 
on her handkerchief and her person generally. 

Then she had another thought. 


Twilight 


233 


“I don’t suppose you really want this,” she 
said. “Supposing I steal it from you!” 

Pat looked at the brazen archness of the old 
yellow face. This dreadful little old woman 
in the squashed black bonnet and the black- 
beaded cape, who looked and did not look like 
a charwoman — where on earth had she come 
from to harass him while his brain was throb- 
bing in agony? 

“Please take the eau de Cologne if you like 
it,” he said. Lady Caroline immediately 
dropped the bottle into the bag she carried on 
her arm to hold such unconsidered trifles as 
came her way. Pat’s politeness was like that 
of a small serious child. 

“I have such a bad headache,” he went on: 
“and I’m afraid you must have strayed into 
this room by accident. Did you come to see 
Mrs. Neville, the housekeeper?” 

“Bless my heart, I didn’t. I came to see 
you,” said Lady Caroline, not at all offended: 
in fact hugely interested by this unlooked-for 
manifestation of Pat’s state. They had been 
guarding him so closely — even Major Har- 
land, even Lord Halstead, whom she had some- 


234 


Twilight 


times met walking or driving with Pat — that 
she had had no opportunity of discovering how 
far the stories about Pat’s state were true. She 
had tried to pump Dr. Devane with no result. 
The little man could be close as an oyster with 
her Ladyship about the things she most wanted 
to know, though diffuse to boredom about all 
the things in which she was not interested. 

“You don’t mean to say you don’t remember 
me,” she said. “Lady Caroline Frayne! Surely 
you can’t have forgotten me!” 

“I’m sorry,” said Pat. “I would try to re- 
member, only it makes my headache worse.” 

“You remember Diana Markham, don’t 
you? And your marriage that was postponed 
because of your accident?” 

Pat looked at her blankly. Just then there 
came into the room Mrs. Noyes. Lady Caro- 
line knew Mrs. Noyes quite well. Her interest 
in her neighbors was not confined to those of 
her own class : and she was an unwelcome visi- 
tor to the cottages. 

“Oh, Nurse Noyes,” she said. “I congrat- 
ulate you on your patient. He looks very well. 
You’ll soon be able to leave him and come back 


Twilight 


235 


to us. Not but that Nurse Gilbert is doing 
very well — quite cutting you out. Mrs. Green 
was talking about you this morning. She said 
‘you was always one for gadding though you 
didn’t never have the chance, not as long as 
she knowed you’.” 

Despite her manifest annoyance at Lady 
Caroline’s presence — she stood now by the 
head of Pat’s sofa like a somewhat ruffled 
guardian angel — Mrs. Noyes smiled ever so 
slightly. If she could only have told Nancy 
Green’s opinions of Lady Caroline — a “danc- 
ing viper” was her favorite epithet, and Mrs. 
Noyes suspected that it was somehow derived 
from St. Vitus’s dance. But she passed it by, 
only the dimple in her cheek showed for a mo- 
ment, so slightly that one could hardly be sure 
when it had flown that it had ever been there. 

“My patient has a very bad headache, Lady 
Caroline,” she said. “He oughtn’t to see visi- 
tors. I don’t know how . . . . ” 

“My good woman, I walked in uninvited. 
Don’t let me get any one into trouble. 
Why, I knew this house before you were born. 


236 


Twilight 


I won’t do his headache any harm. We were 
just having a pleasant little talk . . 

“Please send her away, Mamma,” sad Pat in 
a half-whisper. “Her voice worries me.” 

“Hoity-toity, it’s a very good voice,” said 
Lady Caroline, getting to her feet. She wasn’t 
a bit annoyed. She had discovered what she 
came to discover — how far the rumors about 
Pat’s brain being affected by the fall were true. 
She had had abundant evidence that they were 
true. She had really nothing further to learn: 
and she had acquired a fine large bottle of eau 
de Cologne, which she would never use, by the 
way. She was a perfect magpie for picking up 
all sorts of trifles as she went, which, in nine 
cases out of ten she hoarded away. 

“My dear,” she said to the first person she 
met, who happened to be a great gossip, “that 
poor young man at Grayes is absolutely dotty. 
He positively didn’t know me — took me for a 
visitor to the cook — I’m not surprised, seeing 
the kind of clothes I wear. And — he calls 
Nurse Noyes ‘Mamma.’ The sooner poor 
Diana consoles herself the better.” 


CHAPTER XVI 

CONFESSION 

was the late afternoon of the day on which 
Pat had recognized Mrs. Evelyn that 
Lord Halstead carried the good news to 
Diana. He had fallen back into something of 
the old relationship and Di indeed needed in 
those days all the help her friends could give 
her. She was a detached person, hardly any 
one in Saxham counting as her friends beyond 
Lord Halstead and Mrs. Wynne and little 
Kitty Harland. 

“Pat has recognized an old friend, Di,” he 
said. “Devane was present when it happened. 
Devane is hopeful. He says that at first Pat 
was puzzled, seemed confused between his 
childhood, in which Mrs. Evelyn was good to 
him, and the present. But he pieced it out for 
himself. Devane takes it as a sign that his 
memory is coming back.” 

They stood side by side, leaning over the 
balustrading of the terrace from which on a 
clear day one could see seven counties. There 
237 


238 


Confession 


was an Italian suggestion about the ilex and 
poplar trees that dotted the sward about them, 
as well as the stone balustrading which the 
lichen was turning to all manner of rich, quiet 
colors. The ground went down steeply, ter- 
race after terrace. Below them was a little 
orchard in which the fruit was growing rosy 
that had hardly been in blossom at the time of 
the postponed wedding. 

“Every one will be glad when Pat is him- 
self again,” he said. And then, with a tender 
glance at her face, he added: “It has been a 
terrible ordeal for you, dear.” 

“Yes,” she said quietly: “it has been worse 
than any one knew.” 

She knelt with her elbows on the sun- 
warmed stone, her hands propping her cheeks. 
There was some subtle change in Diana in 
those days. She had become less goddess and 
more woman. Grief and trouble had broken 
up the calm beauty which had been almost too 
assured for earth. 

“Never mind,” he said, and winced as he 
offered the consolation : “presently it will be no 
more than a bad dream. You will marry Pat 


Confession 


239 


and take him away for the long sunny honey- 
moon which will finish his cure.” 

She turned and looked at him, and there were 
tears in her eyes. She wore an abased air, and 
the humility which he did not understand 
touched Halstead in one to whom he had not 
attributed that particular virtue in old days. 
The line of her breast heaved. 

“If I could only tell some one,” she said. “I 
have the need for confession. There was that 
dear old man, Prince Peter, Pat’s friend. I 
could tell him. He would listen to me, though 
I don’t belong to him.” 

“Tell me, Di,” he said, wondering what she 
could mean. As he said it a sharp pang smote 
him. Time had been when he had looked to be 
Diana’s one friend and confidant. She had 
chosen otherwise, but though he had taken it 
like a man, he was never for a moment recon- 
ciled. Just beyond his self-control, the re- 
straints which civilization and heredity impose 
on the gentleman, there lay the primitive pas- 
sions — rage, hate, jealousy, the strong desire 
to seize Di and make her his own. He knew 
it was impossible — now, of all moments, with 


240 


Confession 


Pat lying helpless and stricken. But before, 
when the lad was happy and bonny — dowered 
with so much beauty and grace and good-will 
of all the world that he could do without Diana 
— he should not have been so supine. Why had 
he stood aside and let Diana make the choice 
between them? God knew. Why, he had 
given Pat more than his chance. He had not 
put out one hand to take his own and keep it. 
Now that it was too late he said to himself that 
Diana might have been his for the taking. 

“Tell me , Di,” he said — and hurt himself as 
people will in moments of strong feeling. “Tell 
me . I am come to years of discretion. Not so 
venerable as Prince Peter of Fiirstenburg, but 
old enough, God knows.” 

She looked at him curiously — her eyes still 
wet. She saw nothing amiss with his age. He 
was what he had always been to her. Why 
did he begin to talk of his age now? 

“For the matter of that,” she said, and smil- 
ing through her tears, “I have turned thirty. 
I am neither sorry nor ashamed.” 

“You need not be,” he answered concisely. 


Confession 


241 


He wondered if she had forgotten about the 
confession she had wanted to make, which 
ought to have been made, he said to himself, in 
his arms. Oh, this Diana, this softened, humble 
Diana was dearer than of old. She was no 
longer 

“too bright and good 
For human nature’s daily food.” 

And he had lost her. He wished she would 
not look at him with that long gaze. He re- 
fused to meet her eyes deliberately, but stared 
out over the shining country — corn-fields, 
farm-houses and cattle, woods and pastures, 
villages with pointing church towers, roads and 
rivers — the Weald lying under a haze of heat 
that lifted and fell as the wind blew from the 
sea and lulled again. 

“You would have missed all this going to 
Grayes,” he said: then corrected himself. “ You 
will miss it. Grayes is a fine old house, but it 
has not this.” 

Then he wondered why he had said it: but 
it had had the effect of hurrying the confession 
on her lips. 

“I shall never go to Grayes, now,” she said. 


242 


Confession 


They were quite alone. The tall poplars and 
ilexes in their summer darkness screened them 
from the house. There was a close-cropped 
holly hedge which held the bay of the terrace 
on which they were leaning, as in a well — a 
well open on one side. Below them in the 
fields they could see a shepherd with his sheep, 
cattle standing in a pool of water under an 
overhanging tree, as pigmy shapes. The ter- 
races of Broom Hall and the house were sus- 
pended high above the Weald. 

There was a pause before he spoke in which 
the seconds might have been counted. Max, 
who had been lying on the grass near them, 
rolled over with a deep sigh. No other sound 
except the hum of insects, which was the very 
voice of the summer day. 

“What do you mean, dear?” he asked, after 
the pause. He was himself aware that he had 
used the epithet which has so many varying 
meanings, which can run the whole gamut of 
emotions from passsionate tenderness to a 
chilly contempt. “You are not despondent — 
are you? Just now, when the rest of us are 
hopeful too — and with good cause.” 


243 


“No, I am not despondent,” she said, “about 
Pat. I might be, if things were different. I 
believe Pat will get well. But — there will be 
my reckoning then. If Pat would get well to 
all the rest of the world — only forget that he 
had ever cared for me, I could begin to be 
happy.” 

Halstead turned and stared at her. What 
on earth did she mean? That she had made a 
mistake ? If that were so, why then there must 
be a reason for her not loving Pat. There 

must be some one else. Was it possible ? 

Could it be that .... he had not lost her 
after all? 

He answered her very quietly — holding his 
leaping pulses under control. 

“Tell me, Di,” he said. “You can trust an 
old friend like me.” 

She turned to him passionately. 

“What am I to do, Halstead? It has been 
a terrible mistake from the very beginning. 
Poor Pat! I only thought I cared for him well 
enough. It is unforgivable that a mature wo- 
man like me should make such a mistake, that I 
should make such a one as Pat suffer. You 


244 


Confession 


don’t know how abjectly miserable I have been. 
Let me tell you. I want to tell you everything. 
You will hate me when I have done. That will 
be my punishment. But I must tell some one 
or go mad with it. I wish it might have been 
that kind old priest. Since it cannot be he I am 
perhaps .... atoning somewhat .... by telling 
you.” 

Halstead turned and took her hands in his. 
Not a hint of the leaping pulses in the strong, 
steady clasp. 

“Child, you are overwrought,” he said. “You 
do not know what you are saying. What is all 
this? That you have accepted Pat without 
loving him? A lamentable thing, but you are 
not the first woman who has made such a mis- 
take.” 

“It was your fault,” she said, sobbing, and 
had no idea of what the confession implied. “It 
was your — speaking to me . . about Pat . . 
and making me angry . . and afterwards . . 
keeping away. You ought not to have . . . 
kept away . . and to have looked at me . . in that 
cool, smiling way . . when we met. If you 
knew . . how I hated it. -It used to . . drive 


Confession 


245 


me . . off my head. And . . Pat was so dear 
... I was very fond of him . . am very fond 
of him . . . but not to marry. You . . my 
old friend . . should have helped me . . when 
you saw me . . taking the bit . . between my 
teeth.” 

“How was I to know, Di?” he asked, almost 
piteously. 

“You ought to have known .... that a 

boy like Pat . . . might dazzle me for a little 
while . . . He is so young . . and so charming 
. . but . . . not to marry.” 

Halstead could not trust himself to speak. 
He prayed that his face might not betray him. 
If he had been unready before, when he was 
free to speak — his lips were closed now, for the 
present, while Pat lay helpless. With his vein 
of strong common sense he had no foolish 
conventions about honor. Honor did not exact 
that a woman having made such a mistake 
should put the coping stone on it, should make 
it irretrievable by going on to marriage. When 
Pat was his own man Diana could tell him the 
truth. Now — it would have seemed to him an 
inconceivable treachery, repugnant to all his 


246 


Confession 


instincts of honor and honesty to lay his hand 
upon what his defenceless rival had made his 
own, which must be his till he himself had re- 
leased it. He did not ask himself what would 
happen if Pat was never to be his own man 
again. 

He was quite safe. Diana was too absorbed 
in her confession to take heed of the emotions 
in his face. 

“You are very good to me,” she said humbly. 
“But you don’t know how wicked I am. I 
used to be so sure of myself. Oh, I haven’t 
told you half, Halstead: and I am so afraid 
of your eyes when you know.” 

“Tell me all,” he said, with a gruff kindness. 
“Don’t bother about my eyes. They will be 
all right.” 

Suddenly into his mind came a chill horror of 
the state of the man who has to listen to a con- 
fession of guilt from the lips of the woman he 
loves. It had, could have no relation to his 
own case. It was only some scruple to which 
Diana attached an undue importance: some- 
thing he could brush away as lightly as a cob- 
web. Only for a second he stood in some other 


Confession 


247 


miserable man’s shoes and knew the woman he 
loved a guilty creature. 

“Come, Di,” he said — sharply, “out with it !” 

She lifted her eyes to his face as a judge’s. 

“I am a very wicked woman,” she said. 
“Dear Pat. Who could hate Pat even though 
one didn’t want to marry him? Halstead, do 
you know that my first impulse when I heard 
of Pat’s accident was one of joy that now our 
wedding would not take place? Oh, Halstead, 
every one was pitying me and weeping over 
me: and all the time I had been glad. I was 
glad even when I came to my senses, even when 
I was sorriest for Pat, I was glad of my escape. 
I didn’t want to be. I hated myself for it: but 
there it was, I was glad.” 

She ended on a low note. She was very pale, 
her hands clasped together as she looked down. 
Her finger traced a stain of lichen on the wall. 
There was something lovelier about her in the 
moment of abasement, of confession than there 
had ever been about the triumphantly beauti- 
ful woman he had loved so long. He wanted 
to take her in his arms, to comfort her: but it 
was not the moment. 


248 


Confession 


“Poor Di,” he said gently. “Is that all? It 
only shows what a mistake you made, when you 
could feel like that. When Pat is well again 
you must set the matter right. For the rest I 
wouldn’t think of it. I know you would have 
done anything in the world to save Pat the 
suffering. You were even going through with 
it rather than let him suffer, weren’t you? That 
I think would have been a cruel kindness.” 

He saw her breast heave again. She sighed 
as though an enormous weight were lifted from 
her heart. 

“Oh,” she said. “You don’t think so dread- 
fully ill of me after all ! I have always looked 
to your standards of right and wrong even 
when I seemed surest of myself. I have tried 
to make it plain. Are you sure you under- 
stand how wicked I have been?” 

“I quite understand,” he said reassuringly, 
and patted her hand with a kind, cool, almost 
brotherly tenderness. “I can’t absolve you 
quite as efficiently perhaps as Prince Peter: 
but you are absolved in my eyes, Di. And if 
you would listen to me I should tell you never 
to tell anybody else what you have told me. It 


Confession 


249 


is over and done with, and it was but natural 
after all. Our human nature plays us strange 
tricks, even the best of us. When you tell Pat 
that you have made a mistake you need not 
humiliate yourself. You will not tell him, for 
instance, that you were glad.” 

“Oh no,” she cried. “I couldn’t hurt Pat 
so dreadfully. It is only you I could tell, 
Halstead. I shall not tell any one else. You 
don’t know what a relief it is that you do not 
think me dreadfully wicked.” 

“That is all right, Di,” he said. “You had 
better tell me everything for the future and 
not worry yourself.” 

All the time he had an amazed, bitter com- 
prehension of what that other unhappy wretch 
must feel whose idol, tumbled down by her own 
words, has brought the world down with her. 


CHAPTER XVII 


PARTING 

j[T was the autumn of the year and Pat’s 
recovery had been steady. He was almost 
as well as ever. He had gone back to his own 
pursuits as though he had never relinquished 
them. Once more he rode, he drove, he walked. 
He would have gone back to cricket in those 
last days of cricket if it had been permitted, 
but there were reasons why he should not come 
in contact with the outside world just yet. 

He still forgot at times. Still a word es- 
caped him which had to be sought for before, 
with a laugh, he captured it. The outside 
world was not to be trusted with that fact. 
Only the Harlands, Mrs. Wynne, Lord Hal- 
stead. Pat had not yet recovered the knowl- 
edge that he had loved and was to have married 
Diana Markham, and that was the strangest, 
most baffling feature in his case. 

It was at once a relief and a sadness to Diana 
herself. She had a painful sense of guilt when 
other people were sorry for her. If it had not 
250 


Parting 


251 


been that Lord Halstead shared her secret, 
halved her responsibility, it would have been 
too hard to bear for one who had never played 
a part. She longed to say to those who sought 
to comfort her dumbly because Pat had for- 
gotten he was ever in love that she was glad of 
it. 

Sir Thomas Bardsley, who came ostensibly 
as a friend to have a look at Pat now and 
again, made a suggestion that eased a well-nigh 
intolerable situation for those most immedi- 
ately concerned. 

“Take him away,” he said to Cuthbert 
Mayne: “or better, send him away with some 
one you can trust. He’s quite well able to take 
care of himself. In fact the worst thing you 
could do would be to act as though he could 
not take care of himself. But let him have 
companionship. Everything must be cheerful 
for him. I think I can answer for it that he 
will come back quite ready for his wedding.” 

Sir Thomas was aware of Pat’s lapse of 
memory, which appealed to him as it did to 
others as a singularly tragic situation. He had 
seen Diana Markham and had admired her 


252 


Parting 


beauty and grace : what he took to be her cour- 
age as well. The explicit sympathy shown in 
the pressure of the great surgeon’s hand when 
it took hers had been one of her minor trials. 
Time had been when he had considered the 
necessity of an operation in Pat’s case, had 
suspected a fragment of bone or some such 
thing pressing upon the brain. Now he had 
ceased to think of anything so grave. Nature 
was working Pat’s cure. A little longer and 
the last mist would melt away, leaving the 
boy’s intelligence as bright as of old. 

“I almost wish,” he said, pressing Diana’s 
hand, “that I could order the young gentle- 
man to his wedding- journey. The happier and 
brighter the circumstances the quicker the cure. 
But — we have done wonders, wonders. We 
must only be patient.” 

There was no question of Cuthbert Mayne’s 
taking his nephew abroad. In his own mind 
that held so many secrets Sir Thomas had a 
pitying wonder as to whether uncle and neph- 
ew would ever meet again. 

In the puzzlement as to the best place for 


Parting 


253 


Pat to go to, Father Peter, paying the briefest 
of brief visits to Grayes, brought a solution. 

Why not Fiirstenburg? The young Prin- 
cess Henrietta had been married with great 
eclat early in the summer. There was no 
longer a reason to that prudent mother, the 
Princess Mathilde, for Pat’s absenting himself. 
Pat was clear enough about Fiirstenburg. He 
was quite rejoiced at the idea of re-visiting the 
homely little German Court where he had been 
so happy. He indeed had been blissfully ig- 
norant of any reason other than his own choice 
why he should have left Fiirstenburg. 

Pat himself suggested his traveling compan- 
ions. The Harlands were going to Baden for 
a month or so before the hunting season should 
open. Pat had been out cubbing one or two of 
those brilliant October mornings when the frost 
melts in dew on the grass and the whole world 
is sparkling under a light mist. He protested 
that he was quite recovered from his accident. 
As far as his health requiring a change, it was 
ridiculous, with the blood coursing riotously 
through his veins, and life as fresh a thing as 


254 


Parting 


it was that morning when he cantered by Kitty 
Harland’s side over the brittle stubble. 

But Fiirstenburg — that was another matter. 
He was not Pat not to desire to go back to 
those kindest of friends. Fiirstenburg is one 
of those ridiculous little states which, on the 
map of Europe, is about the size of a pea. If 
it has not been gobbled up long ago it is be- 
cause the reigning family is a younger branch 
of the Imperial house. Pat had a dispropor- 
tionate number of friends in the tiny state. He 
thought of its delights beyond the ceremonious 
little Court, the biergartens : the music open 
to the poorest : the museum and picture gallery 
which alone make Fiirstenburg memorable on 
the map of Europe. Pat had taken hold of 
England with both hands. But he had had 
golden days at Fiirstenburg. He was glad to 
go. 

Cuthbert Mayne was feverishly eager to 
speed him, even though he would have chosen 
any traveling companions for Pat rather than 
the Harlands. Seeing that he knew that his 
parting with Pat might possibly be for this 


Parting 


255 


world he was strangely anxious to speed the 
boy who had become the light of his eyes. 

Mrs. Noyes was still at Grayes, though her 
attendance on Pat had come to an end long 
since. But he had shown a reluctance to part 
with her. When it had been suggested time 
and time again that she was no longer needed, 
Pat was unwilling. So since Pat was in those 
days something of a spoilt child, Mrs. Noyes 
remained, finding plenty of needlework to do 
in the house-keeper’s room, where she sat day 
after day mending the fine damask cloths and 
the linen sheets, which, in the absence of 
a mistress, were less well-kept than they 
should have been. Dr. Devane and the 
village clamored for Nurse Noyes in vain. 
Her little house, which she had grown to 
love so dearly, made its loneliness felt like 
the appeal of a living thing in those quiet 
hours when she sat sewing in silence in the big 
brown panelled room of many cupboards. Her 
garden was sadly overgrown with weeds. This 
year it had had little beauty as compared with 
former glorious summers, and now the 
autumn leaves were covering up a mass of 


256 


Parting 


weeds. But everything must wait on Pat’s 
decision. Pat must leave her free to go before 
she would go. 

The time was gone by when Pat called her 
“Mamma” in the old childish way. It was one 
of the signs of his recovery when he said to her 
shyly that he had somehow associated her in his 
illness with a long-dead mother. Yet though 
he went back to calling her “Nurse” to his 
uncle’s immense relief, his manner to her was 
hardly less tender and affectionate. 

“Pat has a grateful heart,” said Mrs. Evelyn 
one day. “As a little boy he was almost em- 
barrassingly grateful.” 

He himself had conveyed to Mrs. Noyes the 
first news of his going abroad. 

“I shall find you here when I return,” he 
said. 

“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Noyes, flushing easily 
and delicately, as was her way. “There is 
nothing here for me to do — once I have finished 
the linen. Mrs. Crake has been only finding 
work for me. The poor people want me — they 
do indeed — the new nurse has no patience with 


Parting 


257 


their little ways. They are exacting, I know. 
I was used to them.” 

“You would be happier there?” he asked, a 
little frown darkening his sunny face. He had 
discovered his uncle’s dislike for Mrs. Noyes. 
“After all — it will be better for you than here. 
You will not be far away. Remember, I shall 
not lose sight of you. For the sake not only 
of what you did for me, but because of the 
mother I took you for in those troubled dreams 
of mine, we are not to lose sight of each other. 
Yes: you may go back.” 

So, with Pat’s royal permission Nurse 
Noyes went back to her cottage and her pa- 
tients to the immense joy of Golden Green, 
which was at daggers drawn with the fine new 
nurse. 

She was taking up her bulbs the day Pat 
called to say good-bye. There were still a few 
ragged China asters in the garden-beds with 
little shabby bushes of small old-fashioned 
chrysanthemums, murky colored and yellow ; a 
few roses hung their heads on the rose bush 
that trailed over the house. Everything bore 
the subtle blackened touches of the first frost. 


258 


Parting 


She was on her knees by the wet earth when 
Pat found her. 

He came with a great barking and leaping 
of joyous dogs, who had all to be shut out of 
the spotless cottage rooms because of their 
muddy paws. 

“I have come to say good-bye,” said Pat, 
“and bring you a gift from me.” 

Standing the other side of the table, to all 
outward appearance so quiet, the woman could 
hardly control herself as she took the thing he 
handed her. 

It was a miniature in a case — a copy of a 
picture Mrs. Evelyn had had painted of Pat 
at five years old. 

“I thought you would like it,” said Pat. “It’s 
me as a kid. Jolly kid, was I not? Not like 
the hulking brute I am now.” 

The woman looked at “the hulking brute,” 
so fair, so bonny, so kind. She could hardly 
trust herself to speak. 

“I don’t know why I give you that rather 
than a grown-up picture unless it’s because I 
went back to the kid I was then when I called 


Parting 


259 


you ‘Mamma.’ If you’d rather have a grown- 
up picture you shall have it.” 

She clutched the miniature eagerly as though 
some one threatened to take it from her. 

“Oh no, no,” she said. “I love it. How kind 
of you to think of it, you kindest of patients! 
I shall treasure it.” 

If he could know what he had given her! 
With that to gloat over — the picture of her 
little son as he was when she had lost him — 
solitude could never again be solitude for her. 
It was such a thought as only the good God 
could have put into her little son’s mind to 
give her that lovely thing. Holding it in her 
hand, it seemed to light the cottage for her 
against the darkness and the wintry cold 
when Pat should be away. 

“You are very good to me, sir,” she said. “If 
you could give me a photograph of yourself 
grown-up, as you are now! Am I greedy? It 
would help me to remember a too-grateful 
patient.” 

She veiled her eyes as she said it. The con- 
ventional words almost made her laugh as she 
said them precisely, while all the time her heart 


260 


Parting 


was straining as though it would leap from her 
bosom. 

“You shall have one, certainly,” Pat said. 
“But — to remind you. . . . ! Why, I shall 
be here to remind you. I shall go and come. 
I have to look after you to see that those exact- 
ing old creatures don’t wear your life out. You 
are not to work too hard. I am going to give 
you an annuity ” 

“Oh, Sir, it is too good of you. What should 
I do with it? I have plenty for my needs.” 

“You might buy yourself a warm winter 
coat to wear when you are gardening,” said 
Pat. He had discovered the threadbareness of 
the little old jacket in which Mrs. Noyes 
worked. “This place needs a few comforts. A 
carpet on the floor — an easy chair, many 
things. I shall see to it that you shall have all 
you want.” 

They had said their good-byes. Mrs. Noyes 
looked at Pat through a haze: but the unshed 
tears were those of grateful joy. How good 
he was to her — her little son! And — if she 
might be only permitted to sit there at his 
gates and see him as he came and went — in 


Parting 


261 


time perhaps to see his children, it would be 
enough for happiness. Perhaps God saw that 
she had suffered enough and was going to 
allow her so much undeserved bliss for the rest 
of her days. 

She went to the gate with Pat. By the little 
gate they stood talking while the patient, im- 
patient dogs sat in the middle of the road, 
wondering why people should stand and talk 
instead of moving on. 

There was no one visible down the long 
length of road, golden, now, and russet-colored 
with the drift of leaves which had made a soft 
carpet over the place where Pat’s head had 
been broken six months ago. 

“You are to take great care of yourself,” 
said Pat, with a peremptory tenderness. He 
seemed as concerned about his nurse as though 
he had been a lover. 

He stood holding her hand, looking down at 
her from his slender height. 

“Good-bye,” he said. “I shall be back — in 
six weeks’ time. Good-bye.” 

He turned about to go. The dogs broke into 
a joyous clamor. He went a few paces and 


262 


Parting 


turning round for a last look, saw her standing 
by the gate. 

Something in her attitude, the solitariness 
of it, touched him. He ran back like the boy 
he was. 

“Good-bye, dear Nurse, 1 ” he said. “Dear, 
kind Nurse. It will be only six weeks. I shall 
not forget the photograph. Nor the other 
things. I shall see to them when I am in town. 
You shall have them in a few days.” 

He slipped an arm about her shoulders and 
stooping, kissed her. She turned and hurried 
in, closing the door behind her. Pat went at 
a swinging pace down the road, beating off the 
dogs who were leaping upon him with frantic 
demonstrations of joy. He walked too quickly 
to be overtaken by Lady Frayne’s little don- 
key-shay, which contained a second person be- 
sides Lady Caroline, an old lady, who was as 
much interested in the parting between nurse 
and patient as Lady Caroline herself. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

THE STORY OF THE GERMAN GOVERNESS 

J,ADY CAROLINE frayne’s visitor was a sub- 
ject of much interest to Saxham generally. 
The Dowager Countess of Wells was an ex- 
tremely vivacious old lady, who was known up 
and down the country-houses of the United 
Kingdom as well as in London: at foreign 
spas: at pretty well all the hotels of Europe. 
She had known the great and notorious people 
of her day ; and had an immense store of anec- 
dotes, some of which she had unpacked in a 
volume of reminiscences, of which the wit was 
scarcely less marked than the malice and the 
indiscretion only equalled by the courage. 

She had the insatiable curiosity of a George 
Selwyn. She had seen every great criminal 
trial of her time. She had assisted at execu- 
tions. She had seen the birth of so many new 
movements, so many great changes, that one 
might have expected her curiosity to be sated. 
But it was not in the least. There was still 
hardly a historic occasion, a great assembly, 
263 


264 The Story of the German Governess 

a sporting event of magnitude which did not 
attract her. She was in much request for smart 
dinner parties and political and society events, 
for she was untiringly interested and interest- 
ing. In her queer old bewigged head there was 
the history, social and political, of her time. It 
was suspected that she was preparing a pos- 
thumous volume, which would certainly involve 
some publisher in a maze of libel actions while 
he made his fortune, which should set all the 
world to reading it, and prove a gold-mine to 
her Ladyship’s scrapegrace great-grandson, 
Jerry Earnshaw, for whom she had the one at- 
tachment of her selfish old life. 

She was a third cousin, once removed, of 
Lady Caroline Frayne, and had once been 
beautiful. Something of a beautiful com- 
plexion yet lingered in the cracked china of her 
old cheeks — although she had done her best to 
spoil it by the use of cosmetics and now that 
she was old, and not given much to washing her 
face, the powder lay in thick layers in all the 
wrinkles. To touch her small hands was like 
feeling a piece of old kid. She was very proud 
of the tininess of her hands and feet. Her 


The Story of the German Governess 265 

eyes, sunken under shrivelled lids, were ex- 
traordinarily bright and penetrating. She had 
a very fine set of teeth, which she was fond of 
saying were her own because she had paid for 
them. Her mind was as alert as any girl’s. 
She had no heart except for Jerry Earnshaw, 
yet she was credited with certain acts of cyni- 
cal kindness. She was eighty-two years of age 
by Debrett and her nose and chin had begun to 
form a nut-cracker. People thought her ex- 
traordinarily young at a distance or if they 
were short-sighted. On closer inspection they 
were apt to say that she looked her age and 
more, despite the black wig, the powdered 
skin and the fine teeth — rather because of them. 
She went everywhere, and some sensitive 
people were vaguely uncomfortable in her 
proximity. A strange, witty, heartless, cyni- 
cal, wicked old woman. She was known in 
society as the Witch of Endor. 

Going out for a prosy drive with poor Caro- 
line, who had nothing to give her but the gos- 
sip of a dull country place, her Ladyship was 
agreeably diverted by the little incident of the 


266 The Story of the German Governess 

parting between Pat and his nurse which they 
had come upon so unexpectedly. 

Lady Caroline’s donkey went at a walking 
pace when, indeed he did not stop suddenly and 
refuse to budge at all. Lady Wells was a 
judge of a good horse and her knowingness 
had often put a horse-dealer to shame. It was 
only her philosophy that made her tolerate the 
drive behind poor Caroline’s uncertain steed. 
Now she condoned Jack’s slowness and general 
unreliability, since if he had been a decent 
horse or even a pony he might have made 
enough noise in his coming to warn the two 
people concerned in the little drama. 

After all, despite the dulness of Saxham, it 
was an interesting fact about Lady Wells that 
she was as ready to be interested in small gos- 
sip, as big gossip, in the deviations of the little 
as of the great. Although these infinitesimal 
doings of minnows in a pond might neither 
brighten her conversation at a dinner-table, nor 
add anything to Jerry’s provision, which was 
wrapped up in the posthumous book — the 
only provision there was for Jerry, said his 
friends, since he had alienated everything he 


The Story of the German Governess 267 

could lay his hands upon — they yet interested 
her. 

Lady Wells had only arrived overnight. 
She was using poor Caroline to fill up an un- 
expected gap in a round of country-house 
visits. She didn’t mind being poisoned by bad 
cooking at poor Caroline’s, and half frozen, be- 
cause Caroline counted the lumps of coal and 
allowed an infinitesimal scuttleful to the bed- 
room fire. Her Ladyship was too much of a 
cheerful philosopher to mind these things. All 
she feared was a paucity of interest — and lo 
and behold! instead of the giddy wives and 
philandering husbands who usually figured in 
Caroline’s dish of gossip ad nauseam , there 
was really some excellent entertainment for 
Lady Wells. 

“You don’t tell me!” she had said several 
times during the drive: and that “You don’t 
tell me!” had been grateful in Lady Caroline’s 
ear, as though a pupil were approved by the 
master. It was so very seldom she had any- 
thing to tell really worth her Ladyship’s listen- 
ing to. 


268 The Story of the German Governess 

“You don’t tell me,” she had said. “Not the 
Harlands of the great Sapphire Case. Why, 
I remember it as though it were yesterday. He 
was a fine, upstanding man, ruddy, and with 
fine honest blue eyes. I had a seat on the 
Bench. Old Marsden tried the case. He used 
to sleep through most of the cases, but he was 
wide-awake enough then. Jukes defended the 
woman — Mrs. Luttrell. He was rather a 
brute, you know — quite a slogger. I whispered 
to old Marsden that Jukes was a fool. It was 
obvious Harland was an honest man, with 
those eyes. It only made it harder for the 
woman afterwards. They said she took in 
Jukes: that he quite believed in her. He’d no 
luck afterwards — took to drink and went 
under. He was pointed out to me one day 
sitting on a bench in Fountain Court where 
his old chambers were, his hat over his ej^es, 
half asleep. ‘That’s old Jukes!’ said young 
Leycester, with whom I was going to have tea 
— ‘we keep him going with half-crowns for 
the sake of what he once was — to the much en- 
riching of the Red Dragon.’ And so you’ve 
got the Harlands here. Well, they’ve nothing 


The Story of the German Governess 269 


to be ashamed of. They came out of the thing 
with flying colors. I should like to meet them 
and shake hands with him. Does he keep his 
good looks? He had a little brown wife who 
obviously adored him. How she squirmed 
when he was being cross-examined by Jukes. 
Marsden wouldn’t allow some of the ques- 
tions.” 

Lady Caroline apologized, as though it were 
her fault, while she explained that unless dear 
Maria could extend her visit she was hardly 
likely to see the Harlands. 

“Never mind! Never mind. I can come 
again if you’ll ask me. I really had no idea 
that you had such interesting people in this 
part of the world. I wonder what became of 
the woman. A little golden and white piece of 
wickedness. The husband blew his brains out. 
He was quite an insignificant-looking person, 
but a lion-heart. All the women were in love 
with him for the way he stood by her. Up 
to the very last he believed in her.” 

At this point had come the incident of Pat 
and Mrs. Noyes, in which the Harlands and 
the great Sapphire Case was forgotten. 


270 The Story of the German Governess 


“Do tell me all about it,” said Lady Wells, 
settling herself as comfortably as she could in 
the little phaeton, which lacked cushions to 
make the sloping back quite comfortable. 
However, Lady Wells always traveled with a 
cushion for the back of her neck: and having 
arranged it, she partly closed her eyes and, 
forgetting the thinness of poor Caroline’s rug, 
settled herself to listen. 

She was graciously pleased to pronounce 
that Pat’s case afforded material for a three- 
volume novel. 

She had a way of sorting out and catalogu- 
ing any story that was laid before her : and she 
had to hear all about Pat’s forgetting his en- 
gagement to Diana Markham. 

“And what will happen when he remem- 
bers?” she said. “You say the young man is 
dotty, Caroline: and you offer the evidence of 
his having addressed his nurse as ‘Mamma.’ 
That would be only temporary, I expect. 
From the glimpse I caught of him I don’t think 
it likely that any young woman would give 
him up easily. Did you say she was rich? And 


The Story of the German Governess 271 


handsome? And well-born? She might do for 
Jerry. That boy is a constant trouble to me. I 
wish he would marry. What did you say the 
girl’s name was? Monkton?” 

“Markham. Diana Markham. Something 
of a crank. Her father was the same. He 
brought her up like himself. Denis Markham. 
You may have met him abroad. He married 
a daughter of Lord Wynnstays. She died 
when this girl was born and he didn’t come 
back to England for twenty years.” 

“Denis Markham! You don’t say so! The 
hero of a hundred adventures before he settled 
down to be a sort of Veiled Prophet to half 
the diplomacy of Europe. Why I was in a 
party that was captured by brigands in Thes- 
saly somewhere in the fifties. Denis was with 
us. He stayed behind as a hostage so that the 
rest of us might go free. They got two 
thousand pounds ransom for him. The Cap- 
tain of the brigands was an extremely good- 
looking ruffian. I shouldn’t have minded stay- 
ing, to keep Denis company. I must positively 
see his daughter without delay.” 


272 The Story of the German Governess 

“I shall drive you over this very afternoon 
for tea. We shall find Diana in at the tea- 
hour.” 

Lady Caroline was only too delighted to 
discover anything in this backwater acceptable 
to Lady Wells. 

“If you keep providing me with sensations 
such as these I’m not sure I shan’t stay a 
month,” her ladyship pronounced graciously. 
“What is pheasant-shooting, and the men com- 
ing in too tired to be amusing, to this?” 

“What do you make of the situation with 
the nurse?” Lady Caroline asked, addressing 
herself as to an expert. 

“My dear, if I had a young woman I was 
particularly interested in I should marry her 
to the young man without delay — that is, pre- 
suming I was interested in the young man, 
too.” 

“You don’t think she could be . . . up to 
anything — at her age.” 

“There’s no knowing,” Lady Wells said 
oracularly. “There’s the case of the Win- 
graves’ German governess.” 


The Story of the German Governess 273 


“What is the case of the Wingraves’ German 
governess ?” Lady Caroline asked. She did 
not know the Wingraves any more than their 
German governess, but her curiosity was great 
— she herself called it her interest in her fellow- 
creatures — and it had somewhat starved at 
Saxham, till within the last few months. 

“The Wingraves’ German governess, my 
dear, is a creature, fat, spectacled, flat-footed, 
with an expressionless face as flat as her feet. 
A flat-footed mind one would say as well, and 
a voice like a saw. Poor Lady Wingrave en- 
gaged her because she thought the boys would 
be perfectly safe from falling in love with 
Fraiilein Schmidt. The whole household rose 
up in rebellion as soon as they beheld Fraiilein. 
They could not live with the face, the voice, 
the feet. The whole flat-footed personality 
was too depressing. She had the mouth of a 
codfish and eyes to correspond. Mark what 
happened. First it was Lady Wingrave who 
fell under the creature’s baleful influence. Sir 
Gervase didn’t interfere. He has never known 
what Lady Wingrave would do next. The last 
thing she did before she got under the Frau- 


274 The Story of the German Governess 

lein’s thumb was to adopt a baby from an incu- 
bator at Earl’s Court. With a grown-up 
family too! It made the girls too ridiculous! 
And as for the jokes at the clubs!!! The next 
thing the creature did was to hypnotize 
Freddy, the only son at home. He’s always 
been a delicate, bookish sort of person, and he 
has a couple of thousand a year of his own. 
The girls held out. They weren’t good subjects 
perhaps, or perhaps she’d no use for the girls. 
They quarrelled with their mother over Fraii- 
lein and appealed to their father, who wouldn’t 
interfere. He was living at his club and was 
having the freest time from Lady Wingrave 
he had ever had since he had the misfortune 
to marry her. The girls cleared out : went to 
live about at seaside places out of the season 
on the few hundred a year they had from their 
grandfather. Within six months of the rum- 
pus Lady Wingrave died. They say that 
Fraiilein nursed her so tenderly and pitied her 
so incessantly that the poor lady died of noth- 
ing at all, being as strong as an ox. She’d been 
a Christian Scientist for some years, so she 
wouldn’t have a doctor. The next thing was 


The Story of the German Governess 275 


that Freddy and Fraiilein Schmidt set up 
house together somewhere in the depths of 
Suffolk.” 

“Married her?” 

“Nothing of the kind. She went as a sort 
of housekeeper to him. I don’t believe there 
was ever anything in it of that kind of attrac- 
tion. There are not many women so hideous 
as to be quite outside that kind of feeling; 
Fraiilein Schmidt was one of the few. Freddy 
was twenty-four when it began and Fraiilein 
must have been forty-four. It’s ten years ago 
and Freddy has never done anything. He was 
one of the Wingraves with brains : and people 
always said that he would have a career when 
he chose to exert himself. The last time I 
met Monica Wingrave she told me that 
Freddy had just nursed Fraiilein through a 
bad illness. He will never leave her, Monica 
says : and he will be lost when she dies. Weird, 
isn’t it?” 

“Dear me. You don’t think this woman 
could possibly exercise such an influence over 
Pat Mayne?” 


276 The Story of the German Governess 


Lady Wells shrugged her old shoulders up 
to her ears. 

“My dear,” she said. “I only tell one of the 
odd things I have known. I say nothing, posi- 
tively nothing. But the whole situation you 
have presented to me is one of extraordinary 
interest. I am really quite glad I came, Caro- 
line” 

At which compliment Lady Caroline Frayne 
was immensely pleased. 


CHAPTER XIX 

THE ANGEL WITH THE SWORD 

*|[t was late in the afternoon of the day on 
which Pat had gone. 

Mrs. Noyes had had a busy day. She found 
a great deal to do in her little cottage after her 
long absence. She had been scrubbing and 
polishing and turning out, in a great hurry, 
as was her way, to get the little place clean 
and sweet as she was accustomed to having it. 
While she had polished and scrubbed she had 
sung at her work out of sheer happiness. For 
so long she had been obliged to dwell on sor- 
rowful things, while she loved joy and detested 
sorrow, just as she loved the sound handsome 
body and revolted from pain and disease, 
wherefore she had chosen to dwell with pain 
and disease only to find that the old horror and 
repulsion had been mercifully taken away 
from her. 

She sang at her work because Pat had kissed 
her : because she had the miniature of Pat as a 
277 


278 


The Angel With the Sword 


baby to feast her eyes upon in the hours of his 
absence: because he had been kind: because — 
crowning mercy of all the mercies which had 
been given to her, she had established a right 
to stay where she was and see Pat as he came 
and went. He would not forget the twilight 
when he had been hers. He would come to see 
her in her cottage. Perhaps some day she 
would see Pat’s children and hold them in her 
arms. 

She had accomplished a good day’s work and 
the little house smelt sweet and clean. She 
had lit a fire in the grate to which she 
had devoted so much polishing. She had 
changed her dress and brushed her hair, and, 
with a grateful feeling for the rest, she sat 
down to enjoy a cup of tea. 

She had hardly sipped it when there came a 
knock at her door. She stood up to open it, 
expecting nothing but that some case of ill- 
ness required her attendance, sending a little 
sigh to the quiet evening she had hoped for, as 
she went to the door. Standing in the porch 
was not the messenger she expected to see, but, 
instead, Cuthbert Mayne. 


The Angel With the Sword 


279 


Her heart sank as she saw who it was. 

“You are alone?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she answered, holding the door open. 

He came in with the step of exhaustion and 
dropped into the Windsor chair with the ex- 
iguous cushion which Pat proposed to replace 
by a real easy chair. 

“My man is waiting for me outside,” he said. 
“I have walked. It is a long time since I have 
walked so far.” 

“You had better not return on foot, sir,” 
she said, looking at him with the nurse’s eye, 
and forgetting, for once, to be afraid. 
“Hadn’t I better tell the man to go back and 
fetch the carriage?” 

He looked at her for a second, considering. 

“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “It will 
inflict my society on you for rather longer than 
I intended — but I really do not feel able to 
walk back again.” 

“He can take my bicycle,” she said. “He will 
not take long that way. I will tell him, and 
then perhaps you will have a cup of tea.” 

“No tea, thank you,” he said, waving away 


280 


The Angel With the Sword 


her proffered hospitality. “A little brandy, if 
you have it.” 

She brought him the brandy quickly, then 
went out and despatched the nurse-valet with 
the watchful eyes for Mr. Mayne’s carriage. 
When she came back Cuthbert Mayne was ly- 
ing back in her chair with closed eyes. 

At first she thought he was ill, but he opened 
his eyes and looked at her. 

“I’m sorry to have given you the trouble,” 
he said. “I ought not to have come on foot. I 
am not very well.” 

“No,” she said: and lowered her eyes guiltily, 
with a sense that something at least of his ill 
health was to be laid at her door. 

He drew a deep breath and began to speak, 
shading his eyes with his hand as he leant his 
elbow on her little tea-table where her cup of 
tea stood, fast getting cold. In Cuthbert 
Mayne’s presence she could not do anything 
so homely and comfortable as to drink the cup 
of tea which she had so enjoyed in prospect. 

His words reached her amazed understand- 
ing as though she had heard her sentence of 
death. 


The Angel With the Sword 281 

“You must go away from this before Pat 
returns. You must disappear, so far as he is 
concerned, and come back no more.” 

What was it he was saying? She had been 
feeling that God had forgiven her: with her 
extraordinary levity, unpardonable in a woman 
of her record, she had been almost wildly 
happy. 

Cuthbert Mayne’s voice strengthened as he 
spoke — strengthened and became cold. Cuth- 
bert had always worn such an air of justice to- 
wards her — as though he sat as her judge, 
condemned her because he must, but with an 
air of the most patient impartiality. She was 
always the shivering prisoner under Cuthbert’s 
eyes, under Cuthbert’s voice. 

“Do you understand me? I could do noth- 
ing while Pat was here. I had to endure your 
presence in the house. Believe me, I am not 
insensible of what you did for him. If I send 
you away it is because I must.” 

She laughed then, and it was a strange 
sound, which made Cuthbert Mayne look at 
her angrily. 


282 


The Angel With the Sword 


“I said I was not insensible of what you did 
for Pat,” he repeated. 

“You see, he is my own son,” she said, and 
laughed again. 

“You have forfeited the right to call him 
that,” he reminded her, and glanced at the 
unshuttered window as though he feared there 
might be some one there who would hear what 
she said. “You forfeited it many years ago,” 
he went on, with his weary air. “Between 
us, Pat’s friends, we have kept him uncon- 
scious of the shadow of your disgrace. While 
you are here we are on the brink of discovery 
at all times.” 

She answered him in a defiant mood. 

“Even God could not take away my mother- 
hood from me if He would,” she said. “I 
bought Pat with a price that no man under- 
stands. And Pat loves me. Only yesterday, 
in this place, he kissed me.” 

A smile broke over her face as she said it. 
Her moods chased each other as the sun and 
clouds over a cornfield. Her voice dropped 
and was sweet. 


The Angel With the Sword 


283 


“I cannot forbid you to love him,” Cuthbert 
Mayne said, passing his hand across his fore- 
head. “He is one to win love even without 
the tie of blood. Dear Pat — I wish you 
could have loved him well enough once to have 
resisted a contemptible temptation for his 
sake.” 

She stood up, clasping the back of her chair 
with both hands — panting, in a despairing ef- 
fort to palliate, if not to justify. 

“You don’t know how I was brought up,” 
she said. 

“I know enough of it. I know that you 
were always insatiable. Anything you wanted 
you grasped — at any price. I remember how 
you kept Harry poor before you married him 
— jewels, lace, fine garments, theatres, flowers, 
sweets — out of an undergraduate’s allowance. 
It was a generous one. I used to wonder 
where it went to — not knowing you. God for- 
give me — I suspected him of gambling, of get- 
ting rid of it in some foolish, discreditable way, 
not knowing you.” 

The repetition of the phrase conveyed an 


284 


The Angel With the Sword 


intolerable contempt. Her cheeks flamed 
under it, but she answered humbly. 

“I never had anything. I used to be cold in 
winter, hot in summer, half-starved because 
there was no money for anything. I had a 
wretched childhood.” 

“It is no justification,” he said. 

“Perhaps not. But — I was a child. I never 
thought of where the money came from. If 
I thought at all it must have been to believe 
that because Harry was so ready to lavish 
things on me he therefore must be immensely 
rich. I suppose there was something wrong 
with me. I know now that I was a little pa- 
gan. I wanted to be in the sun always. As 
you say, if I wanted anything I laid hold on it. 
No one ever told me anything else. My 
mother, poor woman, she toiled for me. She 
could not give me very much, but what she 
could give me she gave with both hands, keep- 
ing nothing for herself. I believe she half- 
starved herself for me. She used to talk about 
my beauty and the things it would bring me. 
She used to spend her hard-earned pence on 
pretty flimsy things to enhance my beauty. 


The Angel With the Sword 


285 


God knows I do not blame her. It was her 
way of love. She never told me I had a soul.” 

“You justify yourself,” he said coldly. “If 
you were a true penitent, as you would have 
me believe, you would not be so quick to justify 
yourself.” 

She shrank back as though he had struck 
her. 

“I didn’t know,” she said, faltering. “I didn’t 
think about justifying myself. It was only 
that — I was. . . .begging for my life. I was 
a child, Cuthbert. Long after I was married 
and had Pat I was still a child.” 

“Your defence of yourself at the trial had 
a most unchildish ingenuity,” he said : and his 
voice had a sound of loathing in it. “Let us 
not talk about it again. If you mean that you 
were without a sense of moral responsibility 
I concede that you are to be pitied. Never 
did moral obliquity bring suffering to so many 
innocent people.” 

She said no more for herself, but fell to 
wondering idly that she could ever lift butter- 
fly wings, seeing how crushed and bruised she 
was. Cuthbert had reduced her to that state 


286 The Angel With the Sword 

as though he had planted his heel on her soul. 

“You know the Harlands are here,” he said: 
and closed his eyes in a sudden faintness. A 
terrible change passed over his face. She flew 
to him and supported him as though she loved 
him, while she laid him flat on the ground. He 
fumbled at his pocket. 

“The tabloid,” he said, his eyes starting, his 
face darkly purple — the sweat of agony on his 
forehead. 

She found the little box of tabloids and put 
one in his mouth. For a while his agonized 
breathing filled the room. Presently it became 
quieter. The darkness passed away from his 
face. The medicine had done its work, and the 
attack was over. She got up from her kneeling 
position beside him and moved away to a little 
distance: presently came back and helped him 
to rise. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I am obliged for 
your help.” 

She took up her tepid cup of tea and drank 
half of it at a draught. 

“You will go?” he said, feebly, leaning for- 
ward on his stick. “Believe me, I am not urn 


The Angel With the Sword 287 

merciful. It is only that if my dear nephew 
were to know, it would be better for you. Do 
you think you could bear the face he would turn 
on you ? He will know if you stay. How you 
have escaped so long, with the Harlands here, 
I cannot understand. You must go. You can 
have any money you want. I can put you into 
such a position of ease for the rest of your 
days that you will not need to do the painful 
and difficult things you have been doing here.” 

“Money,” she said, quietly, without resent- 
ment. “You offered me money before and I 
did not take it.” 

“You ought to have taken it,” he said 
roughly. “Do you think it was an agreeable 
thing for me not to know what my brother’s 
widow was doing, without money, in the wide 
world?” 

“Some one took me by the hand — for Pat’s 
sake,” she said, faintly smiling. “Some one 
paid for a shelter for me till I was able to stand 
on my feet again, helped me afterwards to my 
hospital training.” 

“I know,” he said: “it was Father Peter. 


288 


The Angel With the Sword 


He must have known you were here. I cannot 
forgive him for having deceived me.” 

“He let me stay,” she said. “Why will you 
drive me away? I am happy here and I ask 
so little.” 

“For yourself, yes,” he returned with feeble 
scorn. “For yourself it is all right. But what 
of Pat? If you were to disgrace Pat! And — 
Pat loves you now, poor boy. Can you not go 
while he loves you?” 

There was silence in the room, broken only 
by the ticking of the clock on which the second 
hand made one complete revolution before she 
spoke. 

“If I go,” she said, “who will account for 
me to Pat? He said I was to stay. It will 
hurt Pat to come back and find that I am 
gone?” 

“The hurt will pass,” he answered quietly. 
“Pat will have so much happiness that he will 
forget you easily.” 

He did not mean to be cruel, but he saw that 
she winced. 

“Things will come right for Pat,” he said. 
“He will remember . . . about Miss Mark- 


The Angel With the Sword 


289 


ham. Why, some day when the years have 
added a few more stones to the cairn of our 
past lives, you might come back. If the Har- 
lands were not here — it is an accursed compli- 
cation.” 

Was it possible that Cuthbert was sorry for 
her? 

“Miss Markham does not love Pat,” she said. 
“If he never remembers it would not break her 
heart.’ 

Cuthbert Mayne turned and stared at her. 

“Not love Pat!” he repeated dumfounded. 
“You don’t know what you are saying. She 
has nearly broken her heart over Pat.” 

“Not from love of him,” Mrs. Noyes said 
obstinately: “not from love of him.” 

He let it be. It was her inconsequent fem- 
inine way. He had always had a contempt for 
her understanding beyond the cunning which 
she had shown in her line of defense, a base 
cunning of the creature that defends itself at 
all hazards to others. 

“Will you tell Pat you have sent me away?” 

The folly of the question hardly angered 
him. He shook his head. Of course he should 


290 The Angel With the Sword 

not tell Pat, but — he had a hope unexpressed 
that no explanation would be necessary be- 
tween him and Pat. His house was in order. 
He was quite ready to leave it. Any minute 
his summons might come. 

“You had better go at once,” he said. “Here 
are fifty pounds for your immediate expenses. 
For the rest — if I am not here — Father Peter 
will be your banker.” 

He drew an envelope from his pocket and 
laid it on the table. A sound of carriage wheels 
came into the quiet room. 

“Good-bye,” he said. 

He was a just man, but in the days that 
followed, between his pangs he was troubled 
by the thought of the woman standing with her 
head bent as he saw it when he looked back. 
After all Harry had adored her, though she 
had killed him. He wondered if Harry would 
think he had done right in driving her out — for 
Pat’s sake. He was ready to answer Harry if 
they met that he had done right. 


CHAPTER XX 

THE HAND OF GOD 

rs. noyes left Golden Green so quietly 
and quickly that she was gone before any 
one had heard a word of her going. Her resig- 
nation was in the hands of the proper person, 
who happened to be Mr. Pierpont, the Vicar: 
her few articles of furniture were taken away 
to be stored indefinitely in a disused stable of 
the Red Lion, the landlady of which she had 
nursed back to health after a difficult oper- 
ation. She herself and her small baggage were 
gone with the carrier to the railway- station and 
dropped into the sea of the wide world before 
any one could object to her going or bid her 
God-speed. 

Driving past the cottage two days after his 
visit, Cuthbert Mayne saw the new nurse, a 
youngish woman with ringletted hair, a hard 
face and smiling lips parted over very white 
teeth, coming down the garden path with an 
air of proprietorship. If he had but known, 
there was grief and dismay in the village 
291 


292 


The Hand of God 


where “ ’er with the rinklets” was compared 
unfavorably with Mrs. Noyes every hour of 
the day. 

Cuthbert Mayne breathed freely and felt 
better physically since Mrs. Noyes had taken 
her shadow off his threshold. He did not know 
yet that the cheque he had left on the table at 
the cottage would never be cashed: that, in 
fact, it had been dropped into the fire not long 
after he had left Mrs. Noyes in her cottage. 

The other things which had troubled and op- 
pressed him with anxiety no longer had power 
to vex him. The Harlands — well, he had not 
been friends with Father Peter without learn- 
ing some of his ways of thought. The Power — 
whatever it might be: he used to call it fate — 
that had brought Pat and the Harlands to- 
gether so strangely, might take care of that 
matter. If Pat’s disgraceful mother were over 
and done with — Cuthbert Mayne thought fret- 
fully of the many lovely and beloved lives that 
were cut short, leaving desolation for their loss 
— Pat might be left to take care of himself. 
The Power — whatever it might be, giving Pat 


The Hand of God 


293 


his radiant look of innocence — had marked 
him as free of the sin and the shame. 

He breathed freely. He smiled over Pat’s 
letters, which were full of high spirits. He 
said to himself that Pat would come back quite 
cured : that he would remember as a child, wak- 
ing up, his frustrated marriage : that all would 
be well: Pat once safely married to Diana 
Markham, he could depart in peace. 

He was so much better in those days, that it 
was as though the nurse’s presence had had 
power to poison the good air for him. He 
felt as though he had gained a respite. Those 
thoughts of never seeing Pat again which had 
been very heavy with him after the boy went 
away left him. He said to himself that he 
would go and consult the new man, who was 
doing wonderful things in the way of patching 
up old hearts. That other man had said long 
ago: “I cannot give you a new heart.” The 
old one had kept going in a troublesome sort of 
way for a good many years since he had heard 
that sentence pronounced. The new men were 
doing wonders. Perhaps they could patch him 
up for a while yet — long enough to see Pat 


294 


The Hand of God 


married, perhaps to see a child of Pat’s: to feel 
that Pat was safe: the old menace far removed: 
the old tracks covered up. It had been 
cowardly of him to think that he would slip 
out of things by dying. Perhaps he would not 
slip out of them even in the grave. He had 
not the comfortable immunity of the childless 
who can say “After me the Deluge!” Since he 
had Pat. The Deluge, whenever it came, to 
Pat or Pat’s children or Pat’s grandchildren, 
must needs trouble him in his grave. 

For some weeks after Mrs. Noyes had taken 
her departure he looked for a letter or a visit 
from Father Peter. The woman would have 
gone to him, her one friend. It irked him 
somewhat to think of Father Peter. One 
never knew how the priest would regard things. 
Father Peter had certainly connived at and 
concealed Mrs. Noyes’ presence at Golden 
Green. Cuthbert Mayne flogged himself into 
something of indignation against the priest. 
He should not have it all his own way if he 
were to reproach Cuthbert with hardness 
towards the woman of whom he had talked — 
Cuthbert Mayne supposed it was the pro- 


The Hand of God 


295 


fessional attitude — as though she had not for- 
feited all rights. 

After a few weeks he became uneasy. His 
bank-book came in and there was no account 
of the cheque for fifty pounds drawn in favor 
of Mrs. Noyes. 

He said to himself that she could not have 
made much money of her district nursing to 
keep her going. He had meant to place a 
provision in Father Peter’s hands for her in 
case of his dying. If he had driven her out, 
at least he meant to provide for her. 

What if she should refuse again as she had 
refused before? He had a qualm when he 
thought of it — Harry’s wife driven out of her 
place of refuge, cast on the mercy of the 
world — sinking lower and lower because she 
would not accept his help to keep her afloat. 

For two or three days after his bank book 
had come in these thoughts worried him like 
gad-flies. About the fourth day they drove 
him to visit Father Peter. To please Pat he 
had bought a motor-car, a thing which he had 
sworn he would never buy. There was one 
thing in its favor: it would take him comfort- 


296 


The Hand of God 


ably to Father Peter’s door with as little 
fatigue as might be. He had not given the 
car much use — any use, indeed, since Pat had 
left him. The thing had lain in its garage 
while he, huddled up in coats, drove behind the 
horses he loved, which it was a grief to him to 
see handled by another than himself. 

The day was abnormally mild for November 
and the drive across the wooded country, 
where the leaves yet lingered in patches of 
scarlet and orange on the boughs, though the 
greater part of the glory was becoming a sod- 
den mud under-foot, was a pleasant one. 

It took three hours to do the cross-country 
journey: and Cuthbert Mayne was never the 
worse for it, despite the forebodings of Elli- 
son, the valet-nurse, who carried a whole 
arsenal of restoratives contained within a tiny 
compass in a little case small enough to be held 
in the hand. He was even the better for the 
drive: and Ellison congratulated himself, for 
the place at Grayes was very much to his mind. 
He did not mind holding it for a matter of 
months or years instead of the weeks he had 
limited himself to at first. Those heart cases 


The Hand of God 


297 


were apt to be tricky. Ellison had known 
many a man alive and well, and going about 
his business, years after the heart-specialists 
had given him up. 

Arrived at Father Peter’s little house he 
dismissed the chauffeur and Ellison to a meal 
at the Inn. He himself sat down to wait for 
Father Peter, in the polite company of Mous- 
quetaire, who was embarrassing in the number 
of handshakes he thought it necessary to give 
the guest. 

He did not sit for very long. There was 
always plenty to engross him in Father Peter’s 
bookshelves, which contained a great many vol- 
umes not often to be found in a poor priest’s 
library. A whole library of classical liter- 
ature, bound in royal purple and showing the 
Imperial Eagles in gold on the covers, held 
Cuthbert Mayne engrossed outside himself 
and his troubled world till Father Peter came 
in, a little pinched old man growing visibly 
smaller as his years neared the eighties, but 
alert and dapper as of old, with the same air 
of a carefully-groomed shabbiness. 


298 


The Hand of God 


Cuthbert Mayne, recalling himself with 
difficulty from the Greek Anthology, turned 
round and held out his hand. It was quite a 
long while since they had met. 

Father Peter remarked on his visitor’s 
looks with a vein of flowing foreign compli- 
ment in the speech. 

“I’m just alive,” Cuthbert Mayne said lan- 
guidly. He was beginning to feel that the 
motor drive had tired him more than he 
thought. “I felt I must come to see you and 
the motor makes it easy.” 

“About Pat?” 

“Pat is all right,” Cuthbert Mayne’s face 
was lit up by a smile. “I’ve brought his latest 
letter received this morning. It contains a 
lively account of how your sister-in-law would 
receive Miss Harland as the fiancee in spite of 
all explanations.” 

“Mathilde grows old: she loses her discre- 
tion,” Father Peter said, with the air of one 
who looks at age from a great distance. 
“Miss Harland too. What an indiscretion! 
Didn’t she recall Pat’s mind to the fact of his 
engagement ?” 


The Hand of God 


299 


“Apparently not. He writes in high spirits 
of the Princess’s fauoo pas. Nothing could be 
more unconscious.” 

“Poor Miss Markham!” 

“Miss Markham is endlessly patient,” said 
Cuthbert Mayne, with a manner which made 
Father Peter glance at him. Was there a 
vein of bitterness in the tone? 

Cuthbert Mayne looked beyond Father 
Peter, almost as though he expected to see 
some one standing behind him. 

“What have you done with. . . .Milly?” 
he asked, bringing out the name with the air 
of repugnance with which he always spoke of 
Mrs. Noyes. 

“What. . . .have. . . .1. . . .done with her?” 

Father Peter’s air of stupefaction was 
unmistakable. A vague fear took possession 
of Cuthbert Mayne. Supposing — supposing 
any harm had come to her? He had often said 
to himself that if she had had any decency she 
would have disappeared years ago. He had 
not formulated to himself the manner of her 
disappearance, but he had* felt that so long as 
the world was rid of her he did not care about 


300 


The Hand of God 


the manner. Now he was suddenly fright- 
ened lest she should have disappeared by the 
suicide’s road, lest he should have pushed her 
that way. If there was any truth in what so 
many people believed — he did not say there 
was no truth — he might have to meet Harry 
one of these days. There would be certain 
accounts he would have to render to Harry. 
There was the blood-stained scrap of paper 
clasped fast in the poor fellow’s hand, which 
only he had seen. The message it contained 
had never reached Harry’s widow. Cuthbert 
Mayne had taken the law into his own hands 
so far as regarded that. She did not deserve 
such magnanimity from the poor fellow she 
had driven to his death. For the rest, he had 
obeyed Harry’s behests in the letter if not in 
the spirit. Was it his fault that she had flung 
his benefactions back at him? 

He stared at Father Peter and the blank 
apprehension was in his face. 

“Mrs Noyes .... left .... Saxham 

.... more than .... three weeks ago,” he said, 
pausing between the words. “I thought of 
course, she would come to you.” 


The Hand of God 


301 


“Ah!” said Father Peter, and his meek voice 
was suddenly the voice of a judge. “You 
drove her out.” 

“I certainly suggested that she should go, 
if you call that driving her out. I gave her a 
cheque for fifty pounds. It has not passed 
through the bank. I intended, of course, to 
make ample provision for her through you.” 

“You drove her out,” said Father Peter, as 
though he had not heard him. “She had 
regained a measure of peace through sincere 
repentance. She had found her work there 
and a refuge against the storm dangers of the 
world. It was cruel, Mr. Mayne.” 

“You should never have kept me in igno- 
rance of the fact that the woman was there at 
our door,” Cuthbert Mayne answered in 
querulous anger, “a menace to Pat’s honor and 
happiness and peace. I care only for Pat. 
I do not consider her at all. She has deceived 
you as she deceived poor Harry long ago. 
She never deceived me. She ought to be in 
sackcloth and ashes, but she is not. She is 
still young and pretty. Look at me! Look 
at Harry in his dishonored grave there more 


302 


The Hand of God 


than twenty years! She ought to be haunted 
by dreadful ghosts, but she is not. Why, I’ve 
heard her singing to herself when Pat was 
recovering. I have heard her laugh — at the 
tricks of a dog.” 

“God permits her to laugh, my friend,” said 
Father Peter quaintly. “He will not have her 
always guilty. Poor child, she has the repent- 
ance for that too.” 

Cuthbert Mayne stared moodily at the 
ground in a bitter mood of impatience. 

“Was Pat not to be considered?” he asked. 
“Was Pat not to be considered, but only this 
fair penitent?” 

The priest passed over the insolence of the 
question, repented as soon as said : 

“Pat, led by the same Hand that guides the 
birds on stormy seas this autumn weather, has 
flown straight to the heart of his mother,” he 
said gently. “I think perhaps that Pat would 
be the one to call you to account if he knew 
what you have done.” 

“Because he does not know her wickedness.” 

“He might be great-hearted enough to for- 
give. You will remember — I need not remind 


The Hand of God 


303 


you — how great-hearted his father was. Did 
he not win the admiration of the whole world?” 

Something like fire and blood came into 
Cuthbert Mayne’s eyes, reddening them. He 
uttered an inarticulate sound of suffering, 
struggled for control and recovered himself. 
He looked so haggard, so stricken, so 
oppressed, that the priest’s heart ached for 
him. 

“No, you need not remind me,” he said. 
“It is because of what Harry was that I am 
what you call merciless.” 

“Dear fellow, poor fellow! If only he 
might have been saved. The sudden shock 
coming after the long strain and agony of the 
trial was too much for him. God have mercy 
on us all ! I think if he had lived, Mr. Mayne, 
your brother would have forgiven.” 

Cuthbert Mayne opened his mouth as 
though to speak — then closed it again. 

“What will Pat say when he knows she is 
gone?” Father Peter asked. 

“Pat must be saved from himself,” Cuth- 
bert Mayne answered. “You are quite right. 
His heart had flown to the woman. And he 


304 


The Hand of God 


is not easily distracted — withdrawn — when he 
loves. He must believe she went of her own 
accord. I know Pat. He will want to search 
the world for her. But he must forget in 
time. No one knows but you my share in it, 
and you are professionally trustworthy/’ 

“Between us all,” said Father Peter sadly, 
“we have tangled Pat’s life in a net of lies. 
Pat, the most candid creature alive! I still 
think he ought not to marry any woman who 
does not know his story. You think otherwise. 
But that is only a part of it. I see all the 
difficulties. How could we have brought up 
Pat with a knowledge to cloud his young life? 
It is very hard, very hard. And he would 
come back to England. The Hand that 
guides our destinies brought all the actors in 
the drama to little Saxham. Was there not a 
meaning in it?” 

“I can see no meaning,” said Cuthbert 
Mayne bitterly. “I see only a wicked jest of 
fate.” 

“Ah — fate and God: they are sometimes 
interchangeable terms,” said the priest. * “But 
God does not mock, my friend, God does not 


The Hand of God 


305 


mock. If you could only have waited and 
been still. At eighty years of age, all but a 
few months, I find all philosophy summed up 
in that, just to wait and lie still in the Hand of 
God.” 


CHAPTER XXI 

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 

j^ROM Fiirstenburg, a week or so before Pat 
was expected home, Diana received a let- 
ter. 

She turned it about in her hands, laid it 
down and looked at its German stamps: took 
it up again: did everything but open it. It 
had thrown her into a violent agitation as that 
vigilant observer, Mrs. Frith, discovered. 
Finally she huddled it up among her other let- 
ters, leaving it unread. 

She ate little or no breakfast and dis- 
appeared early in the meal, leaving Mrs. 
Frith to enjoy the good things. It had often 
been a cause of distress to Mrs. Frith, who had 
known hard times and lodging-house cookery, 
to see the way in which Diana neglected the 
pleasures of the table. She would come down 
to breakfast at any hour: she would disappear 
as the luncheon-bell sounded, leaving the 
dainty dishes to grow cold on the table before 
she returned. She was very often late for 
306 


An Old Acquaintance 


307 


dinner and did not seem to know what she ate. 
Much as she adored Diana it was a fault that 
Mrs. Frith perceived in her character, for the 
little woman had a fastidious pleasure in her 
food although she ate sparingly. 

“There should be a man in the house !” 
Mrs. Frith often said to herself. “There 
should be a man in the house. It’s dreadful 
to see good food spoilt as it is here.” 

This morning however it was not altogether 
Diana’s indifference to food that made her 
leave the breakfast-table prematurely as Mrs. 
Frith was very well aware, for Pat’s letter had 
lain face upward on the top of Diana’s pile of 
letters as the watchful companion passed to 
her place at table. 

Diana opened the letter in the seclusion of 
her own room. The moment was upon her 
which she had been dreading. 

“My dear Di,” ran the letter, “I am coming 
home clothed and in my right mind. Can you 
ever forgive me for what has been after all not 
my fault? Some one should have told me, dear. 
Perhaps it was your will that no one did. No 
one could have thought that my inclination had 


308 An Old Acquaintance 

passed away. It will take a lifetime to make 
up. 

Your devoted 

PAT.” 

A girl in love might have found something 
lacking in the tone of the letter. Not so 
Diana. She could only remember the pas- 
sionate ardor of her young lover and that she 
would have to hurt Pat. A broken engage- 
ment — the thought of it hurt her pride intol- 
erably. But even that counted little beside 
the pain of hurting Pat — at such a moment 
too, when he was picking up all his hands had 
let fall. What a fool she had been! what a 
fool! 

She turned over the letter, refolding it to 
place it in its envelope. She was no coward, 
but she shrank from dashing down Pat’s joy 
as from an unendurable ordeal. 

There was something written on the back of 
the letter. 

“Why didn’t some one tell me? It was left 
to Kitty Harland, the best, the bravest, the 
tenderest of friends. Are you afraid of me 


An Old Acquaintance 


309 


with my cracked pate? You need not be. I 
believe it is quite mended.” 

Cuthbert Mayne came to see her later in the 
day. Since Pat’s accident he had come, to 
some extent, out of his seclusion. 

“Pat remembers everything,” he said. “He 
is full of remorse, poor boy. You should have 
let me tell him. I know it was difficult for 
you ” 

“Since his inclination had departed,” she 
said hurriedly, “it was not his fault. He had 
nothing to reproach himself with.” 

“The inclination, I should think, is in no 
degree impaired,” said Cuthbert Mayne, with 
a stiff attempt at jocosity. Somehow in his 
relations with Diana, he had never been alto- 
gether at ease. 

Di wondered afterwards if he knew that 
Kitty Harland was the one who had cleared 
up things. It was like her, the simple, straight, 
uncomplicated little person to take by the 
horns the ridiculous bull which they had all 
been so much afraid of. 

She said to herself that Pat ought to have 
chosen Kitty Harland : or one of those delight- 


310 


An Old Acquaintance 


ful Evelyn girls whose plainness was better 
than beauty, who had been brought up with 
Pat. The Evelyns had stayed at Grayes once 
or twice and their undoubted breeding and the 
fact that Mrs. Evelyn was the grand-daughter 
of a Duke had done much to establish in the 
esteem of Saxham Maynes who were not in 
Debrett. 

She had always been too old for Pat. Pat, 
that incarnation of golden boyhood, should 
marry a young girl, not a woman so many 
years his senior, who, since their engagement 
became an accomplished fact, had felt Pat’s 
youth as something of a burden. It had been 
her own fault entirely. And she had prided 
herself on her wisdom. Brought up on a 
code and a philosophy, the follies of other girls 
had been unknown to her. She had escaped 
them only to commit the crowning folly of 
accepting one lover to spite another and to 
gratify her own vanity. She called herself 
hard names in those days. If only she could 
have borne all the punishment herself. If 
only she had not to hurt Pat, golden Pat, who 


An Old Acquaintance 311 

was so dear to her in all ways of love except 
one. 

She had to fight it out for herself. Hal- 
stead had gone away, he, the sturdy English- 
man who had always found the delights of 
English country life, with an occasional visit 
to town, and Scotland for the grouse-shooting, 
enough for him. He had gone away at the 
very opening of the hunting season, leaving 
another man to take the hounds for him in his 
absence. He would come back — when she 
sent for him. That meant that she had to 
undo herself the thing she had done, to dis- 
entangle with her own hands the knot into 
which she had tied up their lives. If only she 
might have done it without Pat’s suffering! 

He had not seemed in such a great hurry to 
come back. The Harlands had already 
returned : and the neighbors were quite pleased 
to see them back again. The neighborhood 
had got over its first scandal at the Harlands’ 
unconventional ways and had reconsidered its 
first idea of an ostracism of which the objects 
would have been blissfully unaware. After 
all, it was impossible not to like the Harlands, 


312 


An Old Acquaintance 


apart from the fact that they were well-bred 
and well-born. Was not Mrs. Harland Lord 
Wynnstay’s daughter? And did they not 
have very smart people, quite unexceptionable 
people, down from town to stay with them? 

The Harlands and Cuthbert Mayne had met 
at the time of Pat’s illness. He had had time 
to get over the unreasonable fear that the Har- 
lands must discover in him Harry Luttrell’s 
brother. 

There had been a moment when Major Har- 
land had recognized the picture of Forest 
which Cuthbert Mayne had overlooked. It had 
passed in a flash — for Cuthbert Mayne had 
lied, lied glibly. The picture had been in the 
house when he had come. He had taken over 
a certain amount of the furniture when he 
bought Grayes. It passed for an odd coin- 
cidence. Major Harland had not seemed 
particularly anxious to discuss the matter after 
his first amazed recognition of the picture. 

Cuthbert Mayne had learned to tell such 
lies glibly since he had dropped his patro- 
nymic: but they did not become less bitter: 
they did not cease to be a rankling piling-up 


An Old Acquaintance 


313 


of offence against the woman who had already 
sinned enough. 

Pat came unexpectedly, arriving for lunch 
a whole day sooner than he was looked for. 
He descended on the old house, where a quiet 
decorum and order reigned in his absence, like 
a bright young whirlwind. All the prepara- 
tions to receive him were set at naught. He 
had won the servants’ hearts in an extraor- 
dinary way by reason of his Celtic friend- 
liness and his foreign politeness beyond his 
own striking charm. Whatever of Irish there 
had been in Cuthbert Luttrell had disappeared 
from Cuthbert Mayne, who made no insistence 
nowadays on his Irish blood. In Pat its 
presence could hardly be denied. 

Cuthbert Mayne was tremulously glad to 
see his nephew — glad and afraid. As Pat 
talked at the top of his spirits retailing all the 
news of Fiirstenburg, his uncle trembled for 
the moment when he might make some refer- 
ence to Mrs. Noyes. 

He was glad that the afternoon offered a 
respite. He had promised to go over to the 
Harlands in the afternoon. Mrs. Harland 


314 


An Old Acquaintance 


had been kindly aware of the restlessness with 
which he waited for Pat and had won him from 
his solitude as often as was possible. The man, 
by his own choice friendless for long, had 
turned eagerly enough to the friendship so 
strangely offered to him. 

Pat had brought gifts for everyone. It was 
so like Pat to bring gifts. There was a rare 
book, wonderfully bound and illuminated, 
from the Grand Ducal library, for his uncle. 
Cuthbert Mayne wondered uneasily what gift 
Pat had brought for Mrs. Noyes and when he 
would think of bestowing it. 

Half-way to the Chase the motor passed a 
little donkey carriage trundling along in the 
mud. Pat pulled off his hat with a smile and 
a bow. He had recognized Lady Caroline 
Frayne. The other old lady was a stranger 
to him. 

It occurred to Cuthbert Mayne as a curious 
thing that Pat should be so willing to fly off 
to the Harlands. Surely this afternoon ought 
to be consecrated to Diana. The thought did 
not seem to occur to Pat till they were in the 
long avenue which led to the Chase. 


An Old Acquaintance 


315 


“You won’t mind my turning out to see Di 
after dinner,” he said, with an ingenuous blush. 
“She doesn’t know I’ve come of course — and I 
couldn’t let you go out tea-drinking by your- 
self this very first afternoon. By Jove, you 
don’t know how good it is, Uncle Cuthbert, to 
be with you again and to see you looking so 
well.” 

Sweetest incense to the jaded and suffering 
man, who had grown so much to delight in the 
young life that the delight had been accom- 
panied by a dread of shadowing the brightness 
with his own sick melancholy. 

“I am better, dear lad,” he said. “Your 
coming has put new life into me. You! know 
I’ve put myself into the hands of a new doctor 
since you went. He has done wonders for me. 
I don’t mind telling you now that I thought 
when you left that I might not be here when 
you returned.” 

“You should not have let me go,” said the 
lad, with serious reproach. 

“Well, I am here, you see,” Cuthbert 
Mayne said and laughed because Pat cared so 
much. “Who knows but that if I count in 


316 


An Old Acquaintance 


your happiness I may not be patched up for 
a while yet?” 

In the pleasure of hearing Pat’s protesta- 
tions he put away from him the shadow of fear, 
with a hasty mental glance towards that — fate 
or God or whatever it might be — and some- 
thing almost a prayer that the sword might 
fall before Pat looked at him with estranged 
eyes. 

At the Harlands, where Pat was not 
expected, they found Diana. It was unfor- 
tunate. Pat ought to have met her alone ; and 
there were a dozen people in the room besides 
the Harlands and Mrs. Wynne. The Har- 
lands had a hospitable way, unknown in Sax- 
ham, of expecting people to drop in any after- 
noon — or evening, or any other time for the 
matter of that. This hospitality was much 
appreciated, especially by that portion of the 
residents at Saxham which consisted of elderly 
and very penurious ladies. The Harlands’ 
fires and the Harlands’ meals were enough to 
warm up the chilly old bodies for several days 
in retrospect. 


An Old Acquaintance 


317 


Pat behaved beautifully, being Pat. 
He went and stood by Diana’s chair with a 
happy young air of proprietorship when his 
services were not required to hand round tea. 
In the firelight and the rosy light of the shaded 
lamps Diana’s expression might have been 
taken for granted. She was looking remark- 
ably beautiful in her purple velvet and sables. 
She had always dressed beyond her age, but 
as Mrs. Wynne said, it suited her. 

Into the pleasant friendly atmosphere there 
came the two old ladies who had been climb- 
ing the hill slowly after the motor, in the 
shabby little carriage with its crawling donkey. 
No one would have taken Lady Wells for the 
famous old lady who was welcomed to the 
most exclusive circles by reason of her wit and 
audacity, when her birth would not have car- 
ried her there. There was a distinct flutter 
among the Saxham ladies when she came in, 
in her rusty old black satin cloak draped with 
real lace, and the bonnet, which she considered 
good enough for Saxham, that a charwoman 
might have scoffed at. 


318 


An Old Acquaintance 


There was a moving-back of chairs — a gen- 
eral introduction. It was not the custom at 
Saxham to leave people unintroduced. 

Lady Wells was wont afterwards to refer 
to what followed as the greatest indiscretion 
of her life. To be sure she was very old, 
though she kept the flag flying so bravely in 
the face of the years. 

It was Lady Caroline who routed Cuthbert 
Mayne out of the corner where he wanted to 
be passed over. Lady Caroline only intended 
to do him honor by making him acquainted 
with the great little lady who was still under 
her roof after a month’s visit. 

“Mr. Mayne, Lady Wells,” she said. 

Lady Wells put up her lorgnette, which she 
really used because she needed it, not because 
of its air of chic impertinence. 

“Mr. Mayne,” she repeated wonderingly. 

“Mr Luttrell, is it not? I never forget a 

face: and we met in London a long time ago. 
But how odd — under this roof too. Luttrells 
and Harlands! — dear me, how very strange!” 

There was a sudden pause in the conversa- 
tion. Then it went on furiously. Every one 


An Old Acquaintance 


319 


knew who the Harlands were and the story of 
the great Sapphire Case and their connection 
with it. But Luttrell .... was old Lady 
Wells off her head that she should identify 
Cuthbert Mayne with the Luttrells? 

Cuthbert Mayne slipped out of it very 
simply. He put a groping hand towards his 
waistcoat-pocket, uttered a strange, choked 
little cry: then tumbled forward, almost at the 
feet of the lady who had identified him. 


CHAPTER XXII 


GONE 

go cuthbert mayne's good days that were 
to be with Pat were over. He had 
slipped out of his reckoning as he had meant 
to, but the day and the hour were not of his 
fixing. 

A doctor was called and came with all pos- 
sible speed. There was nothing to be done. 
The mechanism had run down. The heart 
had had its last painful beat. Only the look 
of agony in the dead man’s face remained to 
bear witness to the last tremendous spasm of 
the heart before it stopped forever. 

Pat was distracted, inconsolable, when he 
realized that all was over. The love between 
the two men had sprung full-grown. While 
he sat in the stricken house in the days preced- 
ing the funeral his first consolation came from 
the Harlands. Mrs. Harland gathered the 
rumpled golden head to her breast like a moth- 
er. Major Harland took off his hands the 
dreary preparations for the funeral. Kitty 
320 


Gone 


321 


Harland came and held his hand as uncon- 
sciously as a boy and wept, said a word or two 
about the dead man that somehow fitted Pat’s 
thoughts of him. When the news spread Pat’s 
friends rallied to him. F or the first day or so 
there were only the Harlands. Diana indeed 
had come but she had brought no comfort. The 
kind Harlands had misunderstood her strange 
air of aloofness, not knowing that it was tim- 
idity joined to a certain sense of guilt. As a 
matter of fact she did not yet know the scandal 
with which the neighborhood was ringing. 
She had not taken in the full sense of the hap- 
pening that had suddenly snapt Cuthbert 
Mayne’s thin thread of life. 

“Get him out, Kit, for God’s sake get him 
out!” Major Harland said on the second day 
when some of the bitter and dreadful things 
associated with death were to happen. “Keep 
him out of it as long as you can. The old 
priest who has been like a father to him will 
be here this afternoon. Till he comes keep 
him out as much as you can.” 

It was a morning of sparkling frost. Thin 
gossamers hung over the hedges, sparkled like 


322 


Gone 


sheets of lace fretted with diamonds. The 
russet leaves crackled under-foot. The dogs, 
who had been moaning and shivering with a 
sense of the calamity oppressing their human 
friends, appealed to Kitty’s tender heart, soft 
to all animals. 

She thrust a sisterly hand through Pat’s 
arm. 

“Come out for a walk, dear,” she said. 
“The poor dogs! They are miserable. It 
will be so kind to them.” 

Kitty was still outside the mystery. To the 
Harlands the revelation had come hardly as 
a surprise, so many things had led up to it and 
prepared them for it. Born good Samari- 
tans, it seemed the most natural and easy thing 
in the world for them to be good to Pat. 
Their own fiery trial in the past was over and 
done with. They had forgiven long ago. 
The sin of Pat’s mother, which to the ordinary 
person would have seemed to place an insuper- 
able barrier between them and Pat, had been 
condoned long since. After all it had passed 
over their heads and left them unharmed. 
The woman against whom all the world had 


Gone 


323 


cried out for her infamy to them, her friends, 
was by this time “poor Milly” to them. 

“We were blind as bats or we’d have dis- 
covered it long ago,” Major Harland had said 
to his wife. “Why, Pat is the living image of 
what Milly used to be. And poor Luttrell! 
If he had appeared at the trial we must have 
remembered him : but to be sure, he never did. 
He kept away from Milly’s set in the old days : 
and he never appeared at the trial. Still we 
might have put two and two together. There 
was the picture of Forest at Grayes.” He 
winced sensitively as he remembered Cuthbert 
Mayne’s lie and hurried on. “There was the 
inexplicable mystery about the past of the 
Maynes. No one knew where they had 
sprung from — in a little world like this where 
we must all produce our great-grandparents. 
The Evelyns too. We must have heard of 
them in the old days, although we never met 
them.” 

“Mrs. Evelyn is a saint,” said Mrs. Har- 
land. “She would have had nothing in com- 
mon with our set. They have always lived 
quietly in the country. Poor Milly. Why, I 


324 


Gone 


held Pat in my arms when he was but three 
days old! And to think that we should have 
accepted him as a stranger!” 

She drew a little nearer to her husband. 

“I have always felt, Hugo,” she said, “that 
if Milly sinned badly against us, we had 
sinned against her — innocently, of course. 
She played her first game of cards at our 
house. How did we know that she would 
become a gambler? We took her to her first 
race-meeting. It has often troubled me. We 
were richer than poor Harry with his younger 
son’s income and we brought Milly into a gay, 
extravagant set. We never asked ourselves if 
she was justified in spending as she did.” 

“By Jove, Kate!” the Major said half- 
humorously. “If you go on like this you’ll 
put the shoe on quite the other foot from the 
one the world has been putting it on all those 
years. You’ll make us the sinners and poor 
Milly quite justified in lifting your sapphires 
and selling them to pay her debts and then 
swearing through thick and thin that I’d given 
them to her to sell for me. She might have 
been believed, too, with that angel face — if 


Gone 


325 


there hadn’t been the inevitable flaw. A good 
many people believed in her as poor Harry 
Luttrell did till she owned up and he went 
home and blew his brains out. It was all very 
silly and childish. It was as certain as that 
day follows night that she would be found out. 
But she was cunning too. How she went 
through with it ! If you’d been another 
woman, Kate! If you hadn’t trusted me!” 

Mrs. Harland laid her cheek to her hus- 
band’s as though they were young lovers. 

“That was the one thing impossible — that I 
should doubt you,” she said simply. “But it 
was terrible all the same. Those days .... that 
terrible cross-examination! My poor boy! 
And Harry Luttrell sitting there beside his 
wife looking unutterable things at you.” 

“Don’t think of it, Kate, or you will bring 
back the headaches and the nightmares that 
followed the trial. I see nothing of Milly in 
Pat except his looks and that queer wild gaiety 
which was such a delightful thing in her. He 
has his father’s heart. . . 

“Pat will have to know?” 


326 


Gone 


“The whole place is buzzing with it. He 
will have to know. We must watch him, 
Kate. He has his father’s heart, unable to 
bear shame. Added to the pride that is in 
every decent chap he has the fanatical code of 
honor of the German Army superadded.” 

“Poor Pat! I held him in my arms when 
he was three days old. How are we to tell 
him? I could wish that the cloud on his brain 
had never lifted.” 

She broke out suddenly irritable, a rare mood 
in healthy, sweet-tempered, reasonable Kate 
Harland. 

“What does Diana Markham mean? It is 
she who ought to be by Pat’s side now and not 
our Kit.” 

“I doubt it will come to anything,” the 
Major said, biting his moustache. “They 
were never suited. She may be excused now 
for accepting the freedom which Pat is bound 
to offer her.” 

Meanwhile Pat and Kitty with the 
strangely subdued dogs at their heels were 
walking through the naked woods, their feet 


Gone 


327 


consciously or unconsciously taking the path 
that led to Golden Green. 

They walked in silence, Pat with a stunned 
expression, looking down on the ground as he 
walked. He hardly seemed conscious of Kit- 
ty’s presence unless she spoke to him, or when 
they came to a stile where Pat, although his 
soul seemed out of his body, was as kindly and 
anxiously polite in offering to help her as 
though he were not under a heavy cloud of 
sorrow. Kitty conjectured truly that Pat 
was not thinking, that he was numb, and dumb 
because his thoughts were paralyzed. Her 
heart ached with sympathy for him. She was 
very motherly and her whole thought was to 
mother Pat. Now and again she spoke to one 
of the dogs in her soft low voice, which dis- 
turbed no more than the robin’s song: or she 
touched Pat’s sleeve so lightly as not to attract 
his attention, as though her touch would some- 
how reach his heart and ease its heaviness. 

Her mother always said of Kitty that she 
had the healing touch. Through the numb- 
ness of his sorrow Pat was aware all the time 
of the soft charming presence at his side: and 


328 


Gone 


when they got into a road through a coppice 
where the sun had thawed the early frost, 
making the old ruts unpleasantly muddy, he 
was aware of her discomfort. 

“Why didn’t you speak, Kit?” he said. 
“I’m a selfish beast. Your poor little shoes.” 

For some reason Kitty blushed at Pat’s com- 
passion for her shoes and it was a new, strange 
sensation which had nothing to do with the 
natural shyness that gave her her fawn-like 
air. It disturbed her, this new feeling, and 
made her feel rather ashamed. But she forgot 
it presently in her sympathy for Pat, who was 
so kindly and anxiously troubled over her 
muddy brogues in the midst of his own sorrow. 

“I ought to carry you, Kit,” he said as the 
road became muddier and muddier. “I could 
do it quite easily if you would let me.” 

“Ridiculous!” murmured Kitty, under the 
wide leaf of her hat of Autumn brown, with the 
inevitable touch of pink under the brim. “One 
would think I was a town-bred girl. You 
should see me after I’ve followed the harriers 
on foot. I am mud to the eyes. Hockey is 
not in it with harriers for mud.” 


Gone 


329 


Pat lapsed into silence and Kitty went on 
accumulating landed property on her feet. 
They crossed a ploughed field where the 
path was all but obliterated, passed through 
a gap in the hedge and overlooked a valley 
from the top of a high field. The road ran 
through the valley, climbed the hill the other 
side and joined the road that went to Golden 
Green. They were quite five miles from home 
by this time and the going was rather heavy. 

As they stood at the top of the field Kitty 
caught sight of a patch of scarlet through the 
hedge that bordered the road where it climbed 
the other hill. There was something moving 
there. A head came in sight wearing a peaked 
cap: then the sleek back and shoulders of a 
horse. The lane was full of moving heads and 
scarlet coats and shining horses, all pressing 
forward in a glittering mass. 

“There are the hounds, Pat,” said Kitty. 
“They meet at Golden Green to-day.” 

They stood and watched till the hunt climbed 
up the distant hill and passed out of sight. 

“You should have been out to-day,” said 
Pat. “Kind child, to prefer to help a miser- 


330 


Gone 


able wretch like me. Your father and mother 
too. I can never forget it.” 

“Where are we going to, Pat?” she asked, 
after they too had crossed the valley and were 
mounting the other hill. “It is twelve o’clock. 
Shall we turn back? Mother thought you 
would lunch at the Chase. It is such a beau- 
tiful day for the time of year. I will walk back 
to Grayes with you afterwards.” 

“Oh,” said Pat. “I don’t think I want any 
lunch. But you — of course you must have your 
lunch. I was going to Golden Green. Didn’t 
you know? But I can take you home now and 
return in the afternoon.” 

“For the matter of that,” said Kitty, “if I 
wanted to go home I could go by myself. But 
Mother would be vexed if I were to appear 
without you. She wanted you particularly to 
come back to lunch. We always laugh at 
Mother because she is so anxious about 
people’s food and whether they are warm and 
cold. Besides if you want to go to Golden 
Green, it is only a little way off. There is 
plenty of time.” 


Gone 


331 


“I wanted to see Mrs. Noyes,” said Pat, 
with an air like a tired child. “Ever since 
this happened to me I have been saying to 
myself that I wanted Mrs. Noyes. Only she 
could help me out in this. You’ve no idea, 
Kit, what a nurse she is. And my soul is sick, 
Kit: my soul is sick.” 

He leant towards Kitty and she put her 
little brown hand shyly on his forehead. It 
was very hot, and a pulse throbbed in it as 
though with pain. 

“I am very glad she can comfort you, dear 
Pat,” she said. 

“You comfort me, too, Kit,” he said grate- 
fully. “I never knew I had such friends. I’ve 
a beast of a headache, Kit. It stupefies me. I 
used to feel something like it when I began to 
get better after the accident, and she used to 
put eau de Cologne on my head and darken 
the room, and sit beside me so quietly, with 
such a feeling of kindness about her, that it 
made me fall asleep and forget the pain.” 

“I know quite well,” said Kitty. “It’s just 
like Mother. I’m very strong now but I had a 
fever when I was about ten years old. I 


332 


Gone 


couldn’t bear any one to come near me but 
Mother. I used to crave for her when she was 
out of the room.” 

Now the nurse’s house, at the beginning of 
Golden Green, showed a white gable in the 
distance. Kitty had a sudden idea. Had she 
or had she not heard Mrs. Pierpont complain- 
ing of how the district nurse had gone away 
without a word of farewell and left them all 
in the lurch ? She hadn’t taken it in, not being 
particularly interested. But, of course, it 
couldn’t be Mrs. Noyes. Pat would have 
known. It must have been the nurse who had 
taken her place while she nursed Pat through 
his illness. 

Pat walked on with long strides so that she 
had to hurry a bit to keep up with him. His 
hand was on the garden gate. Suddenly he 
became aware of the desolation of the place: 
the last China asters and dahlias rotted on 
their stalks. The vegetable beds were unkept 
and disordered. The apple-tree had shed all 
its leaves and some of its fruit on the grass 
plot which Mrs. Noyes had kept so tidy. 


Gone 


333 


“She must be out,” he said, rattling the gate 
which was held fast by a padlock. 

“She has gone away,” said Kitty. “Look 
here. There is a board.” 

There was a board, leaning by the little 
fence. 

“This Cottage to Let. Apply at the Red 
Lion.” 

The paper had partially peeled from the 
board. It must have been there for some time 
and had been wet with last week’s rain. A 
little wind sprang up and rustled the paper. 

“Gone!” said Pat: and looked away to the 
blank window-spaces. Some one had thrown 
a worn-out tin pail on to the path which had 
been so neatly edged with box, shutting off 
the herbaceous border. A new desolation 
settled on his heart. 


CHAPTER XXIII 

PAT IS TOLD 

Red Lion could afford them no infor- 
mation. 

“She’ve paid up every penny she owed,” 
said the stout landlady. “It never were much, 
poor soul. And weve some of ’er little sticks 
stored for ’er. She were that good to me w’en 
I ’ad my operation w’ich I’m sure I’ll never 
forget and she’d be welcome to a bit and sup at 
the Red Lion any day o’ the year. Them that 
used to grumble, they’s got somethink to 
grumble at now, as the sayin’ is.” 

“Then, if she’s left her furniture with you 
she’ll come back,” said Pat, his cloud of deso- 
lation lifting a little. 

“B eggin’ your parding, sir, I don’t think 
as ever she’ll come back,” said Mrs. Simmons. 
“An’ serves some right as was never worthy 
of her, say I.” 

However since Mrs. Simmons could adduce 
no better reason for her belief that Mrs. Noyes 
Would never come back than that she felt it in 
334 


Pat is Told 


335 


her bones, Pat was not left without hope: or 
at least her premises were inconclusive to other 
people’s minds and might be so to Pat’s as soon 
as his recovered cheerfulness. 

He went back to lunch at the Chase, more 
than half-unwillingly. If they had let him he 
would not have left the room where Cuthbert 
Mayne lay with sharpened features, quiet 
as though he had been a figure carved out of 
ivory. 

Kitty had whispered to her mother the tale 
of Mrs. Noyes’ disappearance and how it had 
affected Pat, and Mrs. Harland had been 
thoughtful over the recital. 

She followed her husband into his snuggery 
after lunch when he went to smoke his cigar 
and stood behind his chair, with her hands on 
his shoulders. 

“Hugo,” she said, “you remember that you 
thought you saw Milly Luttrell one night.” 

“I remember,” said the Major. “It was a 
vivid impression. It was Milly or her ghost. 
After all, poor thing, her spirit might well 
hang about this place where her boy is. She 
seemed, however, to have a most unspirit-like 


336 


Pat is Told 


terror of me as she slipped away from me into 
the darkness. I suppose it must have been 
Milly and not her ghost.” 

Mrs. Harland straightened herself and 
smoothed her husband’s hair just where it be- 
gan to grow thin at the parting. 

“It wasn’t a ghost, Hugo,” she said. “And 
it wasn’t Milly revisiting the glimpses of the 
moon because Pat was in these parts. I be- 
lieve the woman who nursed Pat with such ex- 
traordinary devotion was his mother.” 

“His mother — but it was the district nurse 
from Golden Green — wasn’t it?” 

“I believe the district nurse from Golden 
Green and Milly Luttrell to be one and the 
same person. It’s sheer intuition, of course, 
for I’ve no proof. But — it was somewhere in 
these parts you saw the woman you took to be 
Milly.” 

“As a matter of fact it was within a few 
hundred yards of the village, though I didn’t 
know anything about the place at the time, we 
being new-comers.” 

“Pat has been to look for her. Kit says he 
went deaf and dumb, as though a blind instinct 


Pat is Told 


337 


led him to her. Poor Kit, her frock is torn 
and she has half a yard of lace hanging from 
her petticoat, while her shoes are past praying 
for. She says she ran at his heels while he 
went like a nosing dog straight for Golden 
Green. The woman was gone.” 

“Gone! Where has she gone to?” 

“Pat would be very glad to know. Didn’t 
you see that he looked something more lost and 
distraught than usual? It is well he has us, 
Hugo.” 

Her husband looked back at her, reached for 
her hands and drew them about his neck. 

“Why the devil, Kate,” he asked with a 
gentle deliberateness, “doesn’t Diana Mark- 
ham comfort Pat and not leave our little Kit 
wearing out her dear loyal little body trotting 
after him up hill and down dale?” 

“Kit is all right,” said Mrs. Harland. “She’s 
as strong as a pony. Miss Markham doesn’t 
seem to be very anxious to mother Pat. Per- 
haps it isn’t in her as it is in Kit. Perhaps she 
has heard about Pat and is too shocked to do 
anything.” 

“You are a wonderful woman, Kate,” said 


338 


Pat is Told 


her husband with great admiration. “Not 
many women would care to have their only 
girl looking after Pat — in the circumstances.” 

“I’m not sure that I care for it, Hugo, but 
I care for Pat. I had him in my arms when he 
was three days old.” 

There were thoughts in the mind of husband 
and wife which remained unspoken, postponed 
till the necessity for speaking should arise, if 
it ever did. 

Kitty came and joined them at this moment 
to say that Pat had gone home. 

“I just let him go, Mother,” she said. “He 
seemed so restless, so uneasy. He couldn’t do 
anything. He asked me to say he was sorry. 
Pat never forgets his politeness, you know. 
What a delightful little boy he must have been! 
I said Father would drive him over, but he just 
shook his head and went off.” 

“I think Pat has had enough of us for the 
present, Kit,” her father said. “I’ve done all 
that is to be done. I think I may take my 
pleasure at home to-day. Shall we have the 
horses round?” 

The Evelyns had gone back to London and 


Pat is Told 


339 


were returning for the morrow’s funeral: but 
Pat was not to be lonely in the big house. On 
the gravel-sweep in front as he approached 
there was a little figure going up and down — 
Father Peter reading his Office. He was ex- 
pected, but not quite so early. 

“My poor lad,” he said, closing his breviary 
and coming to meet Pat. “I got here earlier 
by a cross-country journey. I’ve seen him. 
He looks very peaceful.” 

His kind eyes peered at Pat’s face, observing 
with a deep and tender compassion the lines 
which suffering had ploughed in its young 
beauty. In the heart of the celibate there is 
often an extraordinarily tender feeling for the 
young, the fatherhood which might have been 
spent on one widening its banks till it becomes 
an overflowing river. 

“My poor lad, come and talk to me,” Father 
Peter said, taking Pat’s hand in his own and 
fondling it. “Shall we go indoors? I’ve had 
twinges of rheumatism of late — my house is 
certainly a little damp — else I should propose 
sitting out this fine bright afternoon.” 

He led Pat by the hand, as though he had 


340 


Pat is Told 


been a small child, into the house and the li- 
brary where a fire of mingled coal and logs 
burned pleasantly on the hearth. 

“Now when did you have food, my child ?” 
he asked. 

“I’ve had lunch at the Harlands,” said Pat 
wearily. “I’ve just come from there. Have 
you lunched, Father Peter?” 

“Yes, thank you. My housekeeper put me 
up a very good lunch. I am going to ask you 
to ring for tea, presently, if you please.” 

He said to himself that Pat looked as though 
he wanted food. Probably he had been eating 
little or nothing. Pat rang for the tea obedi- 
ently, adding thoughtfully a request that some 
chicken sandwiches might be sent up. He 
knew what Father Peter’s housekeepers were 
and what the excellent lunch was likely to have 
been. The thoughtfulness for him at such a 
moment touched the priest’s heart oddly. 

“Those people, the Harlands, are good to 
you, Pat,” he said. 

“They are wonderfully good.” 

“God bless them.” 

Pat’s next speech startled the old priest. 


Pat is Told 


341 


Pat was suddenly alert, lifted out of his air of 
dull suffering. 

“There are many things I want you to ex- 
plain to me, Father Peter,” he said. “I can’t 
ask Uncle Cuthbert now. There are things 
you must tell me.” 

Father Peter’s heart sank. He had foreseen 
for some time that Pat must be told. Perhaps 
it had been a foolish thing in their long ago to 
think that Pat could be kept in ignorance. 
Anyhow events had been too strong for them. 
Everything had converged towards the one 
issue. Pat must be told. 

A footman postponed the answer, bringing 
the table and the tea. Pat poured out the tea, 
asking his companion’s preferences as to cream 
and sugar with a carefulness which was odd 
enough at such a moment. Father Peter ate 
his chicken sandwiches almost greedily. He 
was really famished. He went on to a dish 
of buttered toast. 

“I shall have dyspepsia to-morrow,” he said 
gravely; “and a proper punishment for my 
greediness. But you, my son, must eat. It 
is really due to the young body to feed it. A 


342 


Pat is Told 


worn-out body like mine ought to be fed spar- 
ingly. These are really very delicious things. 
I don’t know when I was hungry before.” 

At another time Pat would have smiled, de- 
lighted at Father Peter’s unwonted apprecia- 
tion of the good things: now he watched him 
with a tired haggardness in his gaze. Perhaps 
he was too utterly weary to be impatient at the 
interruption to a momentous conversation. 

“ You were saying?” said Father Peter and 
took snuff. In face of an earthquake or an 
avalanche, Father Peter would have taken 
snuff. “You were saying, my son? You do 
not snuff? Ah, no, it is not a habit for the 
young — nor for a poor priest. It is a dirty, 
disfiguring habit. But the snuff is particularly 
excellent. My sister-in-law, the Princess 
Mathilde, has sent me a supply .... Why — 
I forgot, Pat. You were her messenger. And 
so all goes well at Fiirstenburg? You were 
saying ....?” 

Once again Pat pulled himself together lift- 
ing himself up as it were out of his weariness. 
No one who had looked at the peaceful scene 
the lit library presented — Father Peter taking 


Pat is Told 


343 


snuff and caressing the ears of Pat’s spaniel, 
P at standing by the mantlepiece looking down 
at him, could have imagined how far from 
peace were the minds of the two actors. Father 
Peter through years of abnegation had at- 
tained to a great peace. Now it was broken 
up and disturbed by his grief for Pat, the dread 
of the effect the things he had to tell would 
have on the boy’s life and happiness. 

“I have felt for some time back,” said Pat, 
“that there was some kind of mystery about 
me — about us. People — in our class of life 
especially — do not begin suddenly. Their be- 
ginnings are far back. We have no history, 
Uncle Cuthbert and I — no relatives, no old 
house to talk about. Where was Uncle Cuth- 
bert in the years before we were at Grayes? 
We went back a few years and then we sud- 
denly ended.” 

“It is true, Pat,” said Father Peter, “it is 
quite true. What else?” 

“I remember things,” Pat went on. “I re- 
member things from my babyhood. I must 
have been very young. I remember the nur- 
sery at the top of the high house. I remember 


344 


Pat is Told 


Papa and Mamma. I remember that suddenly 
Papa and Mamma did not come and I remem- 
ber the nurses talking when I was supposed to 
be asleep and the things or some of them, that 
they said. I remember that once I escaped 
and ran downstairs to the room where Papa 
used to sit and wait for Mamma when she went 
out to her parties: and he was there, but he 
wasn’t at all as he had been, not ready to play 
with me or hold me on his knee and talk to me. 
He was sitting with his head hanging when I 
saw him and he turned round at the patter of 
my bare feet on the polished floor: and he 
picked me up and carried me back to the nur- 
sery. While he was tucking me in I whim- 
pered for Mamma and he said that Mamma 
would come back again soon and we should all 
go away together. I never saw him again. 
Something dreadful happened. I could feel the 
fear in the house and the horror upon it. No 
one credits a little child with such thoughts, 
but a child’s terrors are worse than anything 
in later life. Afterwards — Mrs. Evelyn came 
and took me away. From time to time it has 
come back, the terror and the helplessness of 


Pat is Told 


345 


those days. When I remembered I was sick 
with fear.” 

“My poor Pat! My poor child!” 

“You know,” said Pat abruptly, “what pre- 
ceded Uncle Cuthbert’s death?” 

“No,” returned the priest. “Beyond the 
telegram that summoned me I know nothing. 
I wish I had not been away when it came. It 
is not often I am from home.” 

He paused, his eyes intently fixed on Pat’s 
face. 

“An old woman came here to tea with Lady 
Caroline Frayne, Uncle Cuthbert had been 
feeling particularly well. This old woman 
seemed to recognize him — addressed him as 
Mr. Luttrell. Every one heard her. He stag- 
gered: tried to get at the things he always 
carried for those terrible spasms of the heart, 
which he kept from me so heroically, shutting 
himself away in his room, till he had a seizure 
one day in my presence. I would a thousand 
times rather have suffered myself. The ter- 
rible helplessness of looking on at such suffer- 
ing! Before I could get to him to help him, 
he had fallen. He never spoke again.” 


346 


Pat is Told 


“Poor Cuthbert. He always wanted to 
spare you all he could.” 

“Am I a child or a woman?” Pat asked, 
fiercely. “Oh, there has been too much of 
sparing of me. My whole life has been caught 
in a web of lies — kind lies in intention. A 
thousand times better have let me know — not 
let me grow up thinking I was like other 
people. I am not like other people. That 
old woman’s recognition of Uncle Cuthbert 
killed him. He had been much better. I think 
he had begun to hope that he might live. Lut- 
trell was the name I heard in the nurses’ talk 
long ago. One was reading the newspaper 
aloud to the other: they thought I was asleep, 
while I lay wide awake, listening. Luttrell. 
The name was repeated again and again : and 
I knew it was my name. I often wondered 
afterwards how I should be Mayne. There 
was another name — Harland, an odd coinci- 
dence. I remember that Uncle Cuthbert was 
disturbed when first Major Harland called 
upon him. He was troubled at my friendship 
with them. But all that passed away. 


Pat is Told 


347 


Father Peter got up and laid his hand on 
Pat’s shoulder. 

“My son,” he said: “there shall be no more 
concealments. I will tell you everything. Try 
to bear it, Pat. God give you strength to bear 
it : He knows what it costs me to tell you.” 

In the quietness of the lit library with the 
solemn shadow of death upon the house, 
Father Peter told bit by bit, nothing extenu- 
ating, the story of the woman who had stolen 
her friend’s jewels to pay her gambling debts 
and had repaid the friend who had loyally 
done all she could to shield her by accusing her 
husband of the crime. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE VIGIL 

'J^Ihen Father Peter had imagined to him- 
self in his quiet hours how the blow would 
fall upon Pat if some day it should fall, his 
imagination had not touched the dreadfulness 
of what happened. 

Pat was beside himself as the full shame of it 
was borne in upon him. All the years of prep- 
aration in which memory and the inconsisten- 
cies of his life had been piecing themselves to- 
gether in his mind were clean swept away. He 
was not prepared, not in the very least for the 
thing he had to hear. 

He raved, he wept, he stormed; he threat- 
ened to kill himself; he denounced the cruel 
kindness which had brought him up to think 
himself like other men. The gay and sweet Pat 
of all the golden years was gone. This Pat 
was terrible; Father Peter shook before him 
like a convicted criminal. He exhausted him- 
self at last, being already worn out with grief 
and sleeplessness and fasting, and lay where he 
348 


The Vigil 


349 


had flung himself face downward on a sofa, 
only a heave of the shoulders now and again 
testifying that he still lived and suffered. 

Father Peter was a physician as well as a 
priest. In fact in the young days it had been 
a question as to whether Prince Peter, curi- 
ously endowed with the passion for humanity 
since his birth, should cure souls or bodies. 

He left Pat for a little while, sought and 
found what he expected to find, in this house 
of sickness, a well-equipped medicine chest. 
He mixed Pat a sleeping draught with a care- 
ful recklessness. Pat drank it like a child and 
lay back on the sofa cushions. Father Peter 
did not even suggest his going to bed lest the 
madness should waken in him again. He left 
him where he was and in a little while Pat was 
under the influence of the drug, and sound 
asleep. 

He did not waken for dinner. Father Peter 
had some food brought to him where he sat 
watching Pat’s sleep. It was very heavy. 
Father Peter had no misgiving as to the reck- 
lessness of the dose. He had feared for Pat’s 
reason. This, following the injury of last 


350 


The Vigil 


spring! Why, it was enough to unhinge any- 
one. 

The hours passed and Father Peter, having 
read his Office for the day, took a book from 
the shelves which would have interested him 
greatly at another time. Now, while his old 
eyes followed the letters on the printed page, 
he took in scarcely a word. 

A servant came in answer to his bell — 
made up the fire, replenished the lamps, left a 
tray with food against the time when Pat 
should wake, and departed soft-footed. The 
household went to bed. A greater quietness 
settled down on the house. It was a very still 
night. The tapping of a twig against the pane, 
the moaning of the dogs in their sleep, the 
hooting of an owl somewhere in the stripped 
woods were the only sounds except Pat’s 
heavy breathing. 

In the room overhead Cuthbert Luttrell lay 
with candles at his head and feet. It was very 
still overhead. Father Peter wished he might 
have kept vigil with the dead man his last night 
on earth. But the living needed him more. 

He put away the book, of which he found 


The Vigil 


351 


he did not take in a word, and, dropping on his 
knees he prayed for the dead and the living. 
Like the prophet of old he wrestled with the 
angel for a blessing upon Pat, that his feet 
might somehow be delivered from the coil into 
which they were caught, that he might come 
out into green and shining places, that the in- 
carnation of youth and joy which was Pat 
should not be saddened and darkened for the 
years of its earthly pilgrimage. 

He prayed hard, strove hard. He was tired 
out with the passion of his prayers, he being 
eighty years of age, and presently he slept with 
his old head resting on the bed-clothes not far 
from Pat’s twitching and nervous hand. 

He did not know how long he had been 
asleep when he knew that Pat stirred. As a 
matter of fact he had been sound asleep for 
four hours. It would be about three o’clock 
in the morning and the light of the full moon 
was on Pat’s bed. 

Pat was lying awake on his pillow, looking 
so pale in the moonlight that it was a relief to 
the old man when he spoke. 

“Father Peter,” he said: and there was a 


352 


The Vigil 


drowsiness in his voice which showed that the 
narcotic had not yet lost all its power. “Father 
Peter.” 

“I am here, my son. I fear I slept at my 
post.” Father Peter said, struggling to his 
feet. He was very cold. There was a night 
frost and the fire in the room was all but out. 

“What is it, my son?” he asked, rubbing his 
stiff old hands together. 

“I thought you came last night before I 
went asleep,” said Pat in his drowsy voice. “I 
thought I didn’t dream it. Father Pat, where 
is Mamma?” 

“My child, I do not know. Indeed I wish I 
did,” Father Peter said hurriedly, wondering 
how much Pat knew, how much he remem- 
bered : how much was sleep and dreams. 

“She has gone away,” said Pat. “You know 
that, don’t you? I shall never be happy till I 
have found her.” 

“We shall look for her together, my son. 
Poor girl, she should have come to me. Your 
uncle hurried to me, thinking she had surely 
come. I have waited and hoped that she would 
come: but there is no word of her.” 


The Vigil 


353 


Father Peter wondered over Pat's easy ac- 
ceptance of Mrs. Noyes as his mother. He 
wondered if it was something that would pass ; 
the effect of the drug, a return to the old im- 
aginations and delusions of the days following 
the accident. 

Pat’s next words enlightened him. They 
were spoken very quietly. 

“I have been thinking it all out since I’ve 
been lying awake,” he said. “Whatever she 
did then, she has purged herself now. Poor 
Mother, how can we tell what happened to her? 
She need not be afraid of her son.” 

Was it possible that Pat was condoning his 
mother’s sin? The strangeness of it, the com- 
passion of the child for the mother over- 
whelmed the priest. 

“Surely Thy ways are wonderful and past 
finding out,” he murmured to himself, rubbing 
his chill old hands in the dark room. 

“You must help me to find her, Father 
Peter,” went on Pat’s dreamy young voice. 
“We cannot stay here, of course, where people 
could remember the past against her. I shall 
give up Grayes, and when I have found her I 


354 


The Vigil 


shall take her away and look after her for the 
time that is to come. I shall make up to her — 
for the years in which she has been alone.” 

“But, Pat — you have other duties, other ob- 
ligations, my son. There is Miss Markham.” 

“Diana. It will not hurt her very much. Of 
course all that is over. All that belonged to 
the life in which I was Pat Mayne. I am Pat 
Luttrell henceforth.” 

Under his hand which he had rested on Pat’s 
the priest felt a strong shudder go through the 
young body. 

“We need talk no more of it after this, 
Father Peter,” he said. “From henceforth I 
am Luttrell and not Mayne. That will be 
something of the wrong undone, that one 
should lose a name. What it must have cost 
him, lying up there.” 

He indicated with a slight upward motion 
of his head the room where Cuthbert Luttrell 
lay at rest, having slipped out of all the respon- 
sibilities. 

“You saw,” went on Pat. “He has his own 
name on his coffin-lid. I said to Major Har- 
land, the kind fellow — he took it all off my 


The Vigil 


355 


hands : ‘Let it be Luttrell on the coffin-lid and 
not Mayne.’ I am so tired of it. I want to 
tell all the world that I am Pat Luttrell, not 
Pat Mayne. Truth is better, no matter what 
it costs. I should have known from the be- 
ginning.” 

“Oh, Pat, Pat,” said Father Peter, warming 
his hands before an imaginary fire: “we acted 
for the best, indeed we did.” 

“The Cuirassiers too,” said Pat. “I should 
have been asked to send in my commission. 
How they would have looked at me, the good 
comrades! You knew what it was, Prince 
Peter of Fiirstenburg — a school for honor, yet 
you let me be of the Cuirassiers. I had not 
the quarterings to show. I was not Von. They 
accepted me on the word of their Colonel, the 
Princess Mathilde. It was lucky I resigned 
my commission because I felt the call of Eng- 
land. It would have been bitter if the disgrace 
had fallen upon me there.” 

“It was Prince Paul’s doing: or rather it 
was the Princess Mathilde’s. Do not visit it 
on me, Pat,” said the old man pitifully. “How 
could we leave you to suffer? You were the 


356 


The Vigil 


child of my heart from the first hour I saw you 
in Mrs. Evelyn’s arms and you but three years 
old.” 

“I should have suffered less,” said Pat, “for 
I would have grown up to the full knowledge 
of my inheritance.” 

Father Peter took Pat’s arraignment pa- 
tiently. He said to himself that if Pat had 
grown up with the knowledge of good and 
evil he could never have been the Pat of to-day. 
And if the sword had fallen sharply at last 
that had glittered so long above Pat’s head at 
least there were more than twenty golden years 
to Pat’s account. 

Pat’s mind had been struggling clear of the 
narcotic and he was suddenly aware of the 
hunched old figure in the chair: of the chill 
night, the fireless room. As Father Peter bent 
forward, bowed under the weight of Pat’s re- 
proaches, the moonlight fell on the meek old 
head, with the few gray hairs straggling above 
the collar, snow-white, whatever the rest of 
Father Peter’s garments might be. He was 
contrite. 

“Why are you sitting up here with me in 


The Vigil 


357 


the dead of the night?” he asked, with a com- 
pelling tenderness. “Ah, and you are cold, 
while I have been lying warm. Lie down by 
me, Grandfather Peter” — it was a name long 
forgotten, suddenly leaped to mind, which 
golden-haired Pat in baby days had given the 
old priest. 

“Lie down by me, Grandfather Peter,” he 
said, “and let me cover you up. How cold 
your hands are — dead cold. Let me take off 
your shoes for you and you shall lie down by 
me. 

And there was Pat out of bed, fumbling 
with Father Peter’s spats and his shoe-laces. 

Father Peter did not think of refusing. He 
was chilled to the bone. And it was very sweet 
to lie down with Pat in love and amity, to 
have the soft warm bed-clothes drawn over his 
starved old body, to feel the warmth of contact 
with Pat’s youth and health. 

“To-morrow after the funeral,” said Pat 
dreamily, “I will let the friends I have here 
know what I am going to do. Only the friends 
count. If they turn away from me— well and 
good. There are some I think, who will not 


358 


The Vigil 


turn away. The Harlands — it was they who 
suffered the greatest wrong. I shall keep the 
Harlands. And Mrs. Wynne. You have al- 
ways known and so have the Evelyns. Per- 
haps they will think I ought not to stand by 
Mamma. Then they will have to go. My 
whole future life is given to her.” 

“But your fiancee, Pat?” 

“I hope we shall be friends,” said Pat 
drowsily, “I should never have aspired to her. 
She will be happy without me, happier than 
with me. To-morrow, before the funeral I am 
going to read the reports of the trial. I have 
found them in Uncle Cuthbert’s desk — did you 
know that they were published in a little paper- 
covered book at a shilling? I suppose people 
were greatly interested. Strange that Uncle 
Cuthbert should have kept it, considering. I 
want to know everything about it. No one 
shall say I did not know everything. Poor 
little Mamma! She was like an angel in my 
dreams. I wonder what can have possessed 
her.” 

There was silence for a few seconds in the 


The Vigil 


359 


room. Father Peter, comforted by the 
warmth, was dropping asleep. 

“To-morrow,” said Pat, “when it is all over, 
I shall set out to find Mamma.” 

“You must bear with us who acted for the 
best,” said Father Peter. “Before we lay your 
uncle to rest you must forgive him fully and 
freely, as you hope to be forgiven. Say it over, 
Pat, that you forgive him fully and freely as 
you hope to be forgiven. He loved you ten- 
derly.” 

“There is nothing to forgive,” said Pat won- 
deringly. “I know he loved me.” 

“Say over the words,” said Father Peter. 
“For all his faults and errors done out of love 
to you, you freely and fully forgive him.” 

“I freely and fully forgive him — if there is 
anything to forgive,” said Pat. 

The two lay asleep, side by side, through the 
dark hours and the gray dawn, till Father 
Peter awoke with a start to the light in the 
room and a tapping at the door. 

He left Pat sleeping, went to his own room 
and made a careful toilet, shaking his head 
to himself because he had lain down in his 


360 The Vigil 

clothes and they were a year the worse for that 
treatment. 

Afterwards he went to the dead man’s room 
and said his Matins and Prime by the side of 
the open coffin. The coffin-lid stood by the 
wall, with “Cuthbert Luttrell, of Forest” — not 
of Grayes — written upon it for all men to see. 

The dead was very peaceful. The anguish 
of that last desperate casting-forth of the soul 
from the body had passed away from the face. 
Some subtle slight likeness to Pat had come 
out in the worn face. The lips smiled a little, 
perhaps for Pat’s absolution, perhaps because 
it was Cuthbert Luttrell of Forest who lay 
there for all the world to see and not Cuthbert 
Mayne of Grayes. 


CHAPTER XXV 
the yigil ( continued ) 

J)at*s friends, the friends he could count on 
or might count on were in the library at 
Grayes. There were the Evelyns, Major and 
Mrs. Harland, Mrs. Wynne, Father Peter: 
and Mr. Bickerdyke, Cuthbert Luttrell’s man 
of business who was also his old friend and had 
helped to keep his secret. 

The will had been read. It was quite a short 
business. Everything — “to my beloved 

nephew, Patrick Luttrell, commonly called 
Mayne” — with just a few legacies to friends 
and servants. To Father Peter, otherwise 
Prince Peter of Fiirstenburg, five thousand 
pounds for a specific trust, and three hundred 
pounds for his poor. 

Mr. Bickerdyke concluded the reading of the 
will, folded and laid it on one side. 

“Mr. Luttrell,” he said, clearing his throat, 
“as he will be called henceforth, has asked me 
to make a communication to his friends here 
361 


362 


The Vigil ( continued ) 


which he finds it somewhat painful to make 
himself.” 

Pat sat with his head in his hand by Father 
Peter, absently toying with a paper-knife. He 
looked up, and although the color had sprung 
to his cheek he held his head high. 

“After all, I will speak myself,” he said, 
standing up. “Mr. Bickerdyke has been very 
good in desiring to spare me, but it is easier 
to speak than to listen. I have very little to 
say. I believe that every one in this room 
knows my history and my parentage. If I 
had known it earlier myself there are some 
friendships here I should not have sought: they 
may have been given to me in ignorance. One 
friendship especially,” — he turned with a ges- 
ture which some people found almost unbear- 
ably pathetic in the direction of the Harlands 
— “I, of all men, have no right to. It has been 
an honor and happiness to me, but if it should 
be withdrawn I have no cause whatever for 
complaint. I want my friends to understand 
that my dearest hope is to find the mother who 
has somehow slipped away from me — she has 
worked for the last ten years as a district nurse 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


363 


here under the name of Mrs. Noyes. When I 
find her we shall be together.” 

He had a catch in his throat which was al- 
most like a sob. Recovering himself he went 
on. 

“I do not propose to ask my friends to ac- 
cept my mother if they will not,” he went on; 
“she will not, I think, desire to return to a 
world in which she has suffered much. I only 
desire to say that my life will be devoted to 
making up to her — that all love can do . . . ” 

There was another of the strange sobbing 
sounds in Pat’s throat. He made a little ges- 
ture, something at once forlorn and dignified 
— of farewell and renunciation and turned to 
Father Peter and the Evelyns. 

“You have always known,” he said. 

“When you have found your mother, Pat,” 
said Mrs. Harland, coming to his side, “tell 
her the Harlands remember nothing but that 
she was their friend. Bring her to us, Pat, and 
we will welcome her.” 

Major Harland said nothing, but came and 
wrung Pat’s hand silently, while Mrs. Wynne 


364 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and went away 
with her veil drawn down to hide her tears. 

Other people about Saxham were willing to 
be sorry for Pat, to try to forget his parentage, 
seeing that he was well endowed with this 
world’s goods and was young and attractive 
to an uncommon degree, and especially seeing 
that he had many influential friends. Every 
one was sorry for Pat. Even Lady Caroline 
Frayne had written to say that she could not 
forgive herself nor Lady Wells, who, however, 
had meant no harm and was inconsolable for 
the result of her recognition of Mr. Luttrell. 
“She is very old and she was taken by sur- 
prise,” wrote Lady Caroline: “she is ill in bed, 
in grief and humiliation.” Pat had sent back 
a little letter, the magnanimity of which had 
overwhelmed the two old ladies. Later Lady 
Wells had got up and about on the strength 
of it. 

“After all,” she had said, “Poor Cuthbert 
Luttrell’s number was up. And the charming 
young man would have found out sooner or 
later. There’s no ‘joining the flats’ in these 
cases. I don’t see, after all, that there’s any 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


365 


great harm done. I must get him up to Lon- 
don and marry him well. Who cares for 
ancestors nowadays? It’s not who you are but 
what you have that counts. And this quix- 
otic notion about the mother makes the young 
man so interesting.” 

There was a deal of talk over the tea-tables 
of Saxham about Diana Markham in those 
days. Most people were agreed that she had 
not stood by Pat as she might have been ex- 
pected to do. In which they were less than 
just to her: and presently Mrs. Wynne put a 
stop to that particular injustice by a few quiet 
words. 

For Mrs. Wynne had got at the truth. It 
was just as well Lord Halstead was away. She 
had driven straight over to Broom Hall after 
the funeral and the strange, dramatic scene in 
the library at Grayes. 

She had not found Diana, but she had 
found Mrs. Frith, sitting by the fire as usual 
knitting. 

She looked up as Mrs. Wynne came in and 
Mrs. Wynne noticed that she looked disturbed. 

“Diana will be here presently,” she said. 


366 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


“She has gone upstairs. She is naturally 
dreadfully upset.” 

“Yes, so are we all,” said Mrs. Wynne drily. 
“I should have expected to see her and not her 
carriage at the funeral.” 

“She has not been well,” said Mrs. Frith, 
not offering to go in search of Diana. “Mrs. 
Wynne, this struggle is killing her.” 

“You mean — she feels that she must give 
up . . . Mr. Luttrell as we must call him 
now?” Mrs. Wynne said, a little coldly. She 
was very fond of Diana and she was bitterly 
disappointed in her. She had never thought 
the engagement between her and Pat a suitable 
one. She was fonder of Lord Halstead even 
than of Diana, and she had been very sad when 
she had seen them drifting apart as she had 
been obliged to see it. 

Mrs. Frith’s answer startled her by its un- 
expectedness. 

“She will stick to Mr. Luttrell now,” she 
said: “and sacrifice herself and the man she 
loves. She never really cared for any one but 
Lord Halstead, Mrs. Wynne, and she has 
known it for a long time back. Only she 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


367 


couldn’t break her engagement with Mr. — - 
Luttrell, is it? — and he in such trouble. Now 
she’s going to burn her boats altogether. She 
waited to tell Mr. Luttrell till he was well and 
happy and could do without her. Now she 
will never tell him. She will stick to him.” 

“Ah, brave Di! Good Di!” said Mrs. 
Wynne, softly clapping her hands. “But — if 
it is true — I confess I think it is true: that she 
loves Lord Halstead and not Pat — it would be 
folly for her to stick to Pat.” 

“She cries in her sleep enough to break your 
heart,” Mrs. Frith went on: “and — if you 
want proof, Mrs. Wynne” — she suddenly 
turned a deep color, which made Mrs. Wynne 
wonder what was coming — “if you want proof 
I can give it to you.” 

She plunged her hands into the depths of 
the basket which always stood by her chair 
and she brought up a little bag. It bulged and 
by the sound of it, it was full of papers. Draw- 
ing the strings apart she pulled it open and 
drew out what looked like a torn letter neatly 
mended, some pieces here and there missing. 

“It is one of the innumerable letters in which 


368 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


she had tried to tell Mr. — Luttrell,” she said. 

Mrs. Wynne drew back. 

“I knew you would do that,” said Mrs. Frith. 
“I’ve lived long enough with Diana to know 
how such things are regarded. But — I was 
brought up into a humbler rank of life, though 
I married a parson and learnt to be a lady. I 
didn’t mind doing it, to be sure. I guessed 
what she was doing when I saw the waste- 
paper basket full of her torn letters. She has 
written to Lord Halstead this morning. Liv- 
ing with her so long, and loving her like her 
dog as I do, I can tell what she’s thinking of. 
She has waited till all was quiet to-day before 
going to — Mr. Luttrell.” 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Wynne, in great distress, 
“something ought to be done. Pat wouldn’t 
accept such a sacrifice if he knew. If it comes 
to the worst, we shall have to tell Pat. The 
poor boy! Is he to give up everything?” 

“Better he than Diana,” said the woman of 
one idea and one love. 

“I will see Di,” Mrs. Wynne said, “I will 
see what I can do. If she will only give me 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 369 

her confidence! Unless she speaks what am I 
to do?” 

“Can’t you speak? She is very fond of you, 
as she would never be fond of me. I told you 
she had written to Lord Halstead; I caught 
sight of the address and I kept it in my mind. 
It would take him a month to get here. I’m 
afraid it will be too late when he comes.” 

Mrs. Wynne looked at Mrs. Frith in a half 
unwilling admiration. 

“You are very thorough, Mrs. Frith,” she 
said. 

Mrs. Frith concluded the operation which 
is known as purling before she spoke. 

“Yes,” she said, “there isn’t much I wouldn’t 
do to secure her happiness. Lord Halstead 
too. He knows how to treat a woman. I have 
never seen it in his manner and his voice and 
his eyes that I was a paid companion, past my 
youth. If men only knew how women regard 
such things ! She’ll be angry with me when she 
knows. She would be horrified at my reading 
her letters. You can tell her if you think 
right, Mrs. Wynne. I did it for love of her.” 

“I should not think of telling her,” said Mrs. 


370 


The Vigil ( Continued ) 


Wynne, going to the bell herself and ringing it. 

She asked the servant who came in answer 
to let Miss Markham know that she was there. 
The man came back in a few minutes to say 
that Miss Markham had gone out, on foot, 
quite an hour ago. 

When he had gone the two women looked at 
each other. 

“It is taken out of our hands now,” said Mrs. 
Wynne. 

“Unless Mr. — Luttrell refuses her sacri- 
fice. He ought to refuse it. No one in his 
position has any right to marry.” 

Mrs. Wynne answered her coldly. 

“A good many women might think Pat 
worth the sacrifice,” she said. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

DONNA QUIXOTE 

J)at was alone when Diana found him. On 
the terrace outside she had passed Father 
Peter, who, in the interval of reading his Ves- 
pers and Compline, was trying to induce a 
robin to take a crumb from his hand. 

The little bright-eyed creature, hopping 
nearer and nearer, flew away at the sound of 
Diana’s step. Father Peter turned about with 
an ashamed air and lifted his shabby old shovel 
hat. He did not speak as she passed him by, 
the big dog who went with her, scarcely notic- 
ing the bristling of Pat’s terriers. 

The dogs had come in as a trouble and a 
difficulty in Pat’s scheme of getting rid of. 
Grayes. So had the horses and the live stock 
of the place generally. So had the servants. 
Pat already realized wearily how many harm- 
less lives and happinesses depended upon him. 
There was a little army of people and creatures 
who would be torn up by the roots the day he 
went out of Grayes. 


371 


372 


Donna Quixote 


Father Peter looked after Diana. He had 
never seen Pat’s fiancee, but he had had no 
doubt it was she. Her height, her grace, her 
noble air, as Pat had painted them for him, 
were unmistakable. He watched her go into 
the house: then closed his breviary, and with 
the air of a truant schoolboy, resumed his en- 
deavors to coax the robin out of his shyness. 

Diana went on into the house. She had 
schooled her face to show nothing but tender- 
ness. The effort was an obvious one to her 
mind. She wondered if others could see it, 
the stiff mechanical love and pity of her face 
as she felt it must be. 

The first sight of Pat, a slim, golden-haired 
boy sitting at the end of a long library-table, 
changed all that for her. Some lovely wave of 
compassion took her and swept her. If this 
was not love it was something warm enough 
to make her part easier than she had dared to 
hope. 

“Dear Pat,” she said, coming to him with a 
tender hurry. “Dear Pat! My dear boy! I 
waited till you were quiet.” 

He looked up at her with a sudden ashamed 


Donna Quixote 


373 


look, and then with a boyish action which went 
sharply to her heart he laid down his head on 
the papers before him, his face hidden from 
her. 

It seemed the most natural thing in the 
world to take Pat’s head in her arms, to her 
breast, and comfort him. Tears rushed to her 
eyes. Why, it was easy with Pat, as though 
one comforted a child. There was something 
beautiful after all, more beautiful in its sex- 
less motherly tenderness than passion that dis- 
turbs and hurts. There were no reservations 
in her mind, as there was nothing Halstead 
could object to in her heart, when she cradled 
Pat’s desolate young head against the wave of 
her breast. 

For a second there was silence in the room 
except for the ticking of the clock and the 
falling of a coal from the grate. For a second, 
ten seconds, twenty seconds, a minute perhaps. 

Then Pat lifted his head. He was pale, 
partly with the pallor of the narcotic over- 
night, the effects of which still hung about 
him. He lifted his head and disengaged him- 
self gently from her arms. Then with his 


374 


Donna Quixote 


characteristic old-fashioned politeness which 
Kitty Harland had said would not fail Pat on 
the Day of Judgment, he set a chair for her. 

“Dear Di!” he said. “Kind Di! You are 
all I thought you and more. My dear girl, I 
have written to you. You must not do that 
again, Di, what you have just done, lest you 
should make it too hard for me; and because — 
I have set you free, Di.” 

She was wound up to any height of sacri- 
fice and Pat in his affliction was more appeal- 
ing than he had ever been in his days of un- 
troubled beauty. Suffering had completed 
him. There had been something incomplete 
about the old Pat almost soullessly beautiful 
and untroubled. This Pat looked at her with 
the eyes of experience. 

“Oh, but,” she said, “if I will not take my 
freedom! I don’t want to give you up, Pat. 
Nothing is changed between us. I want you 
to marry me as soon as ever you will. He 
would not wish us to wait.” 

“Darling Diana!” said Pat, looking at her 
across the Persian rug as though across seas 
and lands of distances, “all that is over and 


Donna Quixote 


375 


done with. You and I will never marry now. 
Perhaps — even if these things had not hap- 
pened to put it beyond the possibility of 
change — we should never have married. I was 
never good enough for you, Di, never your 
mate. What a presumptuous young ass I was 
to aspire to you! It doesn’t hurt you, Di, 
beyond what your tender heart feels for me — 
I seem now to have always known that there 
was another man who came first, before me. 
I wish now I hadn’t stood in the way, for a 
little while.” 

The self-contained, splendid Diana burst 
into tears. Pat’s eyes were heavy and blood- 
shot : his hair tossed, his color dull : some blight 
had come upon golden Pat : but to the woman 
he was giving up he had never seemed so de- 
sirable. For a moment she felt that the feeling 
she had for Pat when she comforted him would 
be enough, not realizing that such feelings are 
for the high-days and holidays of life, for the 
great moments, and not for the dusty and dark 
days of common life. 

She heard herself pleading for herself with a 
sense of aloof wonder. Was it possible that 


376 


Donna Quixote 


it was she, Diana Markham, who had always 
kept her pedestal with men or thought that she 
had, who was assuring Pat that she loved him 
and desired nothing so much as to stand by his 
side through good and evil? 

Pat was comforting her — putting her away 
from him and consoling her, as though it were 
she who stood in need of consolation. 

At last it was all over. Pat had taken his 
ring from her finger and laid it on one side. 

“Perhaps,” he said, “when you have made 
the other man happy, you will wear this again ; 
I shall have no use for it. The other things — 
you must keep the other things, Di. It would 
hurt me horribly if you were to send them back. 
I shall never forget your goodness to me. It 
is good-bye, dear. As soon as I have finished 
up things here I am going away. I am going 
to look for my mother. You know she has been 
lost. I shall have no happiness till she is 
found.” 

“Dear Pat,” said Diana through her tears. 
“I hope she may be found — since you care so 
much.” 

He wiped her eyes with a careful tenderness. 


Donna Quixote 


377 


Then — when she was fit to face her world once 
again — or at least to face it with the help of 
the dusk in the room and the shadows of her 
big feathered hat over her face, he rang the 
bell and ordered tea. At the same time he 
ordered the carriage to take Miss Markham 
home in half-an-hour’s time. 

He had carried it through with flying colors. 
Diana need never know what it had cost him to 
put her away out of his life. 

Father Peter, coming in answer to the tea- 
bell, helped them through the difficult half- 
hour. He was full of curiosity to know what 
had been happening, but there was no trace of 
it in his manner as he talked to Diana of places 
they both knew abroad and such safe, general 
topics. Presently the hour was got through 
and the carriage was at the door. 

Father Peter stood on the steps to see Diana 
enter the carriage. He saw Pat lift her un- 
gloved hand to his lips. Then as the carriage 
began to move, by the light from the open door, 
he saw Miss Markham lean back in the dark- 
ness of the carriage. 

“Poor children! poor magnanimities!” he 


378 


Donna Quixote 


said to himself, feeling that there was nothing 
he need be told. 

He asked no questions ; but all that day and 
the next Pat was busy with papers and letters. 
All manner of things were sealed up: some 
were addressed and posted to Bickerdyke and 
Harmer, Lincoln’s Inn. Others were placed 
away in safes and locked drawers. 

Father Peter did not hurry Pat. He put out 
of his head the thoughts of his poor people, of 
the need there might be for him at Fenmoor. 
When Pat remembered to ask him if he was 
not keeping him too long, Father Peter made 
answer that he was enjoying a quite unwonted 
holiday. As a matter of fact he had few holi- 
days, the only one worthy of the name since he 
had come to England being a visit to Fiirsten- 
burg because the Princess Mathilde had writ- 
ten to Father Peter’s ecclesiastical superiors 
about his neglect of his family: and Father 
Peter had returned to Fiirstenburg and re- 
mained there a whole four weeks, wearing so 
obvious an air of being under obedience that 
the Princess had let him alone for the future. 
She had accused Father Peter of being cold- 


Donna Quixote 379 

hearted, an accusation which he had accepted 
as being true. 

“If I hadn’t a heart as cold as a stone,” 
said Father Peter, “it would have broken long 
ago at the sight of all the sorrow I’ve tried to 
comfort.” 

It was a way Father Peter had of accounting 
for his unconquerable cheerfulness, his pleas- 
ure in little things, that he was a hard-hearted 
little fellow, as cold as a stone. 

Now he contented himself making pets of 
the robins, teaching the dogs, or trying to teach 
them some of Mousquetaire’s tricks, occasion- 
ally making an excursion outside the gates of 
Grayes and picking up all manner of acquaint- 
ances, from curly-haired school-children to the 
most forbidding tramps, in whom he found 
amazing and unexpected good qualities. 

The evening of the third day Pat appeared 
at the dinner-table with something of an air 
about him which told Father Peter that the 
work was done. 

“To-morrow I shall be free, Father Peter,” 
he said, when they were left alone with the 
wine and fruit. 


380 


Donna Quixote 


“You are coming back to Fenmoor with me? 
There may be — who knows? — some word of 
that poor child. She knows I would be anx- 
ious. It would not be like her to let me suffer.” 

“God grant it!” said Pat, as fervently as 
though Milly Luttrell was the most desirable 
mother in all the world to all the world. 

Pat peeled an apple carefully. Then leant 
forward to refill Father Peter’s glass. It was 
part of Father Peter’s holiday that he drank 
wine instead of the water of his Fenmoor days, 
which he was apt to speak of with enthusiasm 
as beautiful water. 

“I am keeping on Grayes,” he said abruptly. 

“So!” said Father Peter and waited to hear 
more. 

“At least I postpone giving it up. The 
search may be a long one — God knows. When 
she is found I shall leave it to her to say. I 
shall leave the place standing just as it is. The 
horses will stay and the dogs. If she could 
face it I confess that I would like to honor her 
— here, where every one knows.” 

The next day they were at Fenmoor. A 
letter lay on top of a little pile of correspon- 


Donna Quixote 


381 


dence. There were Italian stamps on it. The 
post-mark was of a little Umbrian town. 

Father Peter opened it quickly, pushing off 
Mousquetaire, who was fawning on him, mak- 
ing frantic demonstrations of delight. 

“It is for you as well as for me, my son,” he 
said. “She lives: she is well.” 

There was an immense relief in his voice. 
His worst fear was set at rest. 

“Tell my son,” she had written, “that I am 
at peace and in shelter. I am in the hands of 
God. He is not to grieve because I have left 
him. He need never know that I was his 
mother. As for you, Father Peter, may God 
reward you! This is my farewell.” 


CHAPTER XXVII AND LAST. 

THE END OF THE SEARCH 

^hree years had passed over since Cuthbert 
Luttrell’s death, and Grayes was still 
standing as it had been, awaiting the master 
who delayed in coming. Saxham had almost 
forgotten its dread of having to receive Milly 
Luttrell. Perhaps because of its relief it was 
quite prepared to receive Pat and to let by- 
gones be bygones. 

But Pat was trudging up and down the 
world, following clues which broke off in his 
hand, becoming very much older for the search 
and the disappointment, yet never giving up 
the hope of finding that undesirable person, 
his mother. 

Sensible people were agreed among them- 
selves that Milly Luttrell had done the one 
possible thing in the circumstances in taking 
her shadow off her son’s life. But, what if he 
wished for the shadow? Even Father Peter 
had urged on Pat to give up his search. 

“She has found peace,” he said, “in some 
382 


The End of the Search 


383 


convent or other. Let her be! My son, you 
know she wished to disappear. She might not 
thank you for disturbing her.” 

Pat smiled — one of his rare smiles. He had 
left his radiant youth behind him forever. His 
smile said that for once Father Peter had 
spoken a foolish thing. 

He had come and gone at Grayes, had stayed 
there now and again for short intervals, just 
long enough to let the servants feel that the 
master was not dead, to throw the dogs into 
raptures of gain after loss, only to overcloud 
their days too soon with the shadow of renewed 
loss. 

Some changes had taken place. Diana was 
now Lady Halstead, had been for some two 
years or more. She had not worn mourning 
long for Pat, said the critical people, who were 
confuted by Pat’s friendship with the Hal- 
steads. 

Kitty Harland, despite many suitors, was 
still unmarried. Her father and mother 
seemed to have lost their love of globe-trotting 
and to have found solid earth at the Chase. 
Major Harland had taken to breeding race- 


384 


The End of the Search 


horses and found abundant occupation for his 
leisure hours among the beautiful creatures 
that fed in his carefully- fenced paddocks; the 
silky throughbred mothers, the foals wild and 
slender, who came to be petted and were off 
like the wind. To produce a Derby winner 
was adventure enough even for Hugo Har- 
land. He had already had success in some of 
the smaller races. But he looked to the time 
when the Blue Ribbon of the Turf should be 
his. 

Kitty, who had spent the first two decades 
of her life in hot foreign towns, among vine- 
yards and olive trees, further afield in Asia 
and Africa, vowed that she had had enough 
of other countries and could never tire of this 
green England, whatever the season. Mrs. 
Harland was a born country woman. It was 
an unacknowledged relief to Major Harland 
that his daughter had no desire for gaieties be- 
yond what dull Saxham could provide. Sax- 
ham had been less dull of late since the com- 
ing of some new families with young people, 
and since Lady Halstead led the fashion in 
entertaining. 


The End of the Search 


385 


“I wonder when Kit will grow tired of turn- 
ing down eligible young men,” said Major 
Harland on the day when Kitty had sent 
young Nicholas Pomfret of Raynham Abbey, 
a parti and a good fellow to boot — young and 
good-looking and very much in love with Miss 
Harland — about his business. 

Mrs. Harland looked up at her husband 
from under the shade of her gardening hat. 
She was a great gardener and the Chase gar- 
dens were in those days such things of beauty 
as no hired gardener, unaided by some one’s 
love for the garden, could make them. 

There was something curious in her expres- 
sion which made him ask: 

“What is it, Kate?” 

“If you don’t know,” said Mrs. Harland 
stooping over her roses. 

“Oh — you think still that it is Pat. You 
think that is still going on in Kit’s mind ? W ell 
— we are a queer pair, you and I, Kate, to be 
discussing with equanimity our daughter’s 
fancy for a young man with Pat’s antece- 
dents. We — of all people in the world!” 

“Could you bear it, Hugo!” 


386 


The End of the Search 


He laughed, a little shortly. 

“Oh, yes, I could bear it — if it must come — 
for Kit’s sake. But — Pat has not been near 
us for a year. I hoped Kit was forgetting. I’d 
rather have a husband for our only daughter 
who had not that behind him.” 

A month later Mrs. Wynne died. It was 
bright and beautiful September weather after 
a somewhat cold and broken summer. 

“Lovely weather to die!” she had said, only 
the Sunday before, lying, awaiting her release. 

Saxham was in mourning for her. She was 
such a wonderful personality that people said 
the place was not the same, would never be the 
same without her. She belonged to the old 
life, the old history. Her like was not made, 
not seen in these later, smaller days. 

The day of the funeral was as beautiful a 
day as heart could imagine. Kitty Harland, 
with her father and mother, sat in the church 
in a pew facing the open side-door that led out 
into the graveyard. The whole place was 
bathed in sunshine so brilliant that the cool 
shade of the church was welcome. 

Hearts were heavy for the dear old friend 


The End of the Search 


387 


who was gone. It was terrible to think of the 
open grave, the sad procession coming nearer 
the church, the coffin, on such a day. Kitty 
Harland, with her hands covering her face, 
wept in the quietness of the church, and looked 
up to see the sunshine lying over the graves 
like a benediction and a promise. 

The coffin came into the church borne on 
men’s shoulders. Kitty hid her face. Impos- 
sible, impossible to think of the kind old friend 
as lying there! Not there, not there were the 
great brain and the great heart. There was 
nothing there but the worn-out garments of 
the spirit that had slipped them. 

She lifted her head, and she was aware that 
some one had come into the pew, who had not 
been there before. Her eyes fell on the hands 
and she felt her heart leap in her breast. The 
sensitive hands — she would have known them 
anywhere for Pat’s. There was not much be- 
longing to Pat that she did not carry in her 
heart. 

She looked higher — to Pat’s face. Pat was 
lean, older looking: the last three years had 
been working upon him, writing a whole his- 


388 


The End of the Search 


tory of care and suffering on the face that had 
been so smooth and young. But Pat was 
beautiful still, though it would never again be 
the careless beauty of the pagan world that had 
lain over Pat’s youth. 

He was dressed in deep black — for the old 
friend, of course. Kitty wondered where he 
had sprung from, how he had heard. There 
had been no news of him at Grayes for a long 
time back, although the servants kept the house 
ready as though he might come any hour of 
the day or night. 

He stood by Kitty and her father and 
mother at the graveside. After the funeral 
was over many people came up and took Pat’s 
hand and said they were glad to see him back. 
Major and Mrs. Harland were returning to 
the Manor House with Mrs. Wynne’s niece, 
who was to be her successor there. 

“Take Pat home, Kit,” Major Harland said. 
“We shall be back for tea presently, to hear all 
Pat’s news.” 

Kitty and Pat went back across the fields, 
walking slowly — the September heat was try- 
ing — talking of the old friend who had just 


The End of the Search 


389 


left them. They dawdled through the woods : 
there was plenty of time. 

“She would have said it was so kind of you 
to come,” said Kitty, smiling faintly. “You 
know how she used to say: ‘But how very 
kind!’ ” 

“As a matter of fact I did not know till I 
arrived at Grayes at half-past one o’clock — 
just in time to snatch a hasty lunch and get to 
the church.” 

“But — this?” said Kitty, putting a shy hand 
on Pat’s arm. 

“It is . . . for my mother,” he said, and 
turned away his head. “I found her only to 
lose her.” 

“Ah!” 

Kitty’s expression of sympathy was like a 
little moan. 

“Sit down here and I will tell you about her, 
Kit.” 

He indicated a fallen tree trunk by the wood- 
land path, and when she had sat down he flung 
himself on the mossy herbage beside her. 

“I have had three years of it, Kit, three 
years,” he said. “Some time I will tell you 


390 


The End of the Search 


about those three years. It is a long story of 
hopes and disappointments. I am glad it has 
come to an end. I know now that she is safe. 
After all — my love could not have kept her 
from hurt. My poor little mother. She will 
never be hurt or lonely or afraid any more.” 

Not a hint in Pat’s voice that the woman so 
tenderly mourned was the mother who had dis- 
graced and shamed him, who had wrought such 
evil to all about her. A passing thought came 
to Kitty of the people who had said that Pat 
was “dotty,” still, although he had seemed to 
recover from the wound on his head, and had 
adduced as proof that could not be gainsaid the 
attitude he had taken up towards his mother. 
Kitty had flown out like a little spitfire at one 
lady who had thought that Pat’s conduct 
showed a rather insensitive mind to questions 
of honor and honesty and repute. 

“How did you find her?” she asked softly. 

“Oh, she had covered up her tracks well. If 
she had not let us know at last we should never 
have found her. She has been for the last three 
years in a Convent of Poor Clares right in the 


The End of the Search 


391 


heart of London while we were searching the 
world for her. When she knew she was dying 
— oh, she was very careful that her shadow — 
her shadow , God help her! — should not fall on 
my path — they wrote to Father Peter. He 
had to recall me. I was in the Apennines when 
his letter found me — following a last clue. I 
saw her — every day for the little while she 
stayed. They did away with the solemn en- 
closure for me. I was able to be with her. 
She died in great joy, because she had ceased 
to be afraid of my eyes. She used to laugh, 
Kit — the poor shadow, with such young eyes 
and such a smile — and then she would repent 
because she was so impenitently gay that she 
could laugh even then. Kitty — she was just 
a poor child, my mother.” 

“Do you know what gave her most joy — 
after me, Kit? It was to feel that your father 
and mother were able to forgive. She asked me 
many questions — about them and about you. 
She gave me something for you. The Rev- 
erend Mother let me have it. There is no 
private property among the Poor Clares, but 


392 


The End of the Search 

she had allowed my mother to keep it, with her 
Crucifix and her Book of Hours, lent to tier, 
but for some one else’s use now.” 

He put his hand inside his coat and drew 
out a small packet. He took off the wrappings 
about it and disclosed what it contained. It 
was the copy of the miniature of himself in 
childhood which he had had made for his 
mother. 

“She said you had the best right, Kit,” he 
said. “A foolish thing. She was dying, Kitty. 
I am not for any woman. All the world would 
tell you that, Kit. The only thing would be — 
if you cared.” 

He turned and looked at her and his eyes 
were wet. She opened her arms, and with a 
cry he let her take him, comforting him, with 
his head on her breast. 


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1 25 

1 25 
0 75 

0 75 

2 00 

1 25 
1 35 
1 25 
1 25 
1 25 

net, 1 35 
1 25 
1 25 


net, 

net, 

net, 


net, 


net. 


net, 

net, 

net, 

net, 


1 25 
1 00 
0 75 


ALTHEA. Nirdlinger. 

ADVENTURE WITH THE APACHES, AN. Ferry. 
AS GOLD IN THE FURNACE. Copus. 

AS TRUE AS GOLD. Mannix. 

ARMORER OF SOLINGEN. Herchenbach. 

BELL FOUNDRY, THE. Schaching. 

BERKLEYS, THE. Wight. 

BEST FOOT FORWARD. Finn. 

BETWEEN FRIENDS. Aumerle. 

BLACK LADY, THE. Schmid. 

BISTOURI. Melanpri. 

BLISSYLVANIA POST-OFFICE. Taggart. 
BOB-O’-LINK. Waggaman. 


0 60 
0 45 
0 85 
0 45 
0 45 
0 45 
0 45 
0 85 
0 85 
0 25 
0 45 
0 45 
0 45 


6 


BOYS IN' THE BLOCK. Egan. 

BROWNIE AND I. Aumerle. 

BUNT AND BILL. C. Mulholland. 

BUZZER’S CHRISTMAS. Waggaman. 

BY BRANSCOME RIVER. Taggart. 

CAKE, THE, AND THE EASTER EGGS. Schmid. 

CANARY BIRD, THE, AND OTHER TALES. Schmid. 

CAPTAIN TED. Waggaman. 

CAVE BY THE BEECH FORK, THE. Spalding. 

CHARLIE CHITTYWICK. Bearne. 

CHILDREN OF CUPA. Mannix. 

CHILDREN OF THE LOG CABIN. Delamare. 

CLARE LORAINE. “Lee.” 

CLAUDE LIGHTFOOT. Finn. 

COLLEGE BOY, A. Yorke. 

CUPA REVISITED. Mannix. 

DADDY DAN. Waggaman. 

DEAR FRIENDS. Nirdlinger. 

DIMPLING’S SUCCESS. C. Mulholland. 

DOLLAR HUNT, THE. E. G. Martin 
ETHELRED PRESTON. Finn. 

EVERY-DAY GIRL, AN. Crowley. 

FATAL DIAMONDS, THE. Donnelly. 

FIVE O’CLOCK STORIES. 

FLOWER OF THE FLOCK. Egan. 

FOR THE WHITE ROSE. Hinkson. 

FREDDY CARR’S ADVENTURES. Garrold. 

FREDDY CARR AND HIS FRIENDS. Garrold. 

FRED’S LITTLE DAUGHTER. S. T. Smith. 

GODFREY THE LITTLE HERMIT. Schmid. 

GOLDEN LILY, THE. Hinkson. 

GREAT CAPTAIN, THE. Hinkson. 

GUILD BOYS OF RIDINGDALE. Bearne. 

HALDEMAN CHILDREN, THE. Mannix. 

HARMONY FLATS. Whitmire. 

HARRY DEE. Finn. 

HARRY RUSSELL. Copus. 

HEIR OF DREAMS, AN. O’Malley. 

HIS FIRST AND LAST APPEARANCE. Finn. 

HOP BLOSSOMS, THE. Schmid. 

HOSTAGE OF WAR. Bonesteel. 

HOW THEY WORKED THEIR WAY. Egan. 

IN QUEST OF THE GOLDEN CHEST. Barton. 

INUNDATION, THE, AND OTHER TALES. Herchenbach. 
“JACK.” 

JACK HILDRETH ON THE NILE. Taggart. 

JACK O’LANTERN. Waggaman. 

JUNIORS OF ST. BEDE’S. Bryson. 

JUVENILE ROUND TABLE. First Series. 

TUVENILE ROUND TABLE. Second Series. 

JUVENILE ROUND TABLE. Third Series. 

KLONDIKE PICNIC, A. Donnelly. 

LAMP OF THE SANCTUARY. Wiseman. 

LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE CHILD JESUS FROM MANY 
LANDS. Lutz. 

LITTLE APOSTLE ON CRUTCHES. Delamare. 

LITTLE GIRL FROM BACK EAST. Roberts. 

LITTLE MISSY. Waggaman. 

LOYAL BLUE AND ROYAL SCARLET. Taggart. 

MADCAP SET AT ST. ANNE’S. Brunowe. 

MAKING OF MORTLAKE. Copus. 

MARKS OF THE BEAR CLAWS. Spalding. 

MARY TRACY’S FORTUNE. Sadlier. 

MASTER FRIDOLIN'. Giehrl. 

MELOR OF THE SILVER HAND. Bearne. 

MILLY AVELING. S. T. Smith. 

MORE FIVE O’CLOCK STORIES. 

MOSTLY BOYS. Finn. 

MY STRANGE FRIEND. Finn. 


0 25 
0 85 
0 45 
0 25 
0 45 
0 25 
0 45 
0 60 
0 85 
0 85 
0 45 
0 85 
0 85 
0 85 
0 85 
0 45 
0 45 
0 60 
0 45 
0 45 
0 85 
0 45 
0 25 
0 75 
0 85 
0 45 
0 85 
0 85 
0 45 
0 25 
0 45 
0 45 
0 85 
0 45 
0 85 
0 85 
0 85 

0 45 

1 00 
0 25 
0 45 

0 75 

1 15 
0 45 
0 45 
0 85 
0 45 

0 85 

1 00 
1 00 
1 00 
0 85 
0 25 

0 75 
0 45 
0 45 
0 45 
0 85 
0 45 
0 85 
0 85 
0 45 
0 25 
0 85 
0 85 
0 75 
0 85 
0 25 


MYSTERY OF CLEVERLY. Barton. 0 85 

MYSTERIOUS DOORWAY. Sadlier. 0 45 

MYSTERY OF HORNBY HALL. Sadlier. 0 85 

NAN NOBODY. Waggaman. 0 45 

NED RIEDER. Wehs. 0 85 

NEW BOYS AT R1DINGDALE. Bearne. 0 85 

NEW SCHOLAR AT ST. ANNE’S. Brunowe. 0 85 

OLD CIIARLMONT’S SEED BED. S. T. Smith. 0 45 

OLD MILL ON THE WITHROSE. Spalding. 0 85 

OLD ROBBER’S CASTLE. Schmid. 0 25 

OUR LADY’S LUTENIST. Bearne. 0 85 

OVERSEER OF MAHLBOURG. Schmid. 0 25 

PANCHO AND PANCHITA. Mannix. 0 45 

PAULINE ARCHER. Sadlier. 0 45 

PERIL OF DIONYSIO. Mannix 0 45 

PERCY WYNN. Finn. 0 85 

FETRONILLA. Donnelly. 0 85 

PICKLE AND PEPPER. Dorsey. 0 85 

PILGRIM FROM IRELAND. Carnot. 0 45 

PLAYWATER PLOT. Waggaman. 0 60 

POVERINA. Buckenham. 0 85 

QUEEN’S PAGE. Hinkson. 0 45 

QUEEN’S PROMISE. Waggaman. 0 60 

RACE FOR COPPER ISLAND. Spalding. 0 85 

RECRUIT TOMMY COLLINS. Bonesteel. 0 45 

RIDINGDALE FLOWER SHOW. Bearne. 0 85 

ROMANCE OF THE SILVER SHOON. Bearne. 0 85 

ROSE BUSH, THE. Schmid. 0 25 

SEA-GULLS ROCK. Sandeau. 0 45 

SEVEN LITTLE MARSHALLS. Nixon-Roulet. 0 45 

SEVEN LITTLE MARSHALLS AT THE LAKE. Nixon-Roulet. 0 85 

SHADOWS LIFTED. Copus. 0 85 

SHEER PLUCK. Bearne. ' 0 85 

SHERIFF OF THE BEECH FORK. Spalding. 0 85 

ST. CUTHBERT’S. Copus. 0 85 

STRONG ARM OF AVALON. Waggaman. 0 85 

SUGAR-CAMP AND AFTER. Spalding. 0 85 

SUMMER AT WOODVILLE. Sadlier. 0 45 

TALES AND LEGENDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Copella. 0 75 

TALISMAN, THE. Sadlier. 0 60 

TAMING OF POLLY. Dorsey. 0 85 

THAT FOOTBALL GAME. Finn. 0 85 

THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE. Taggart. 0 45 

THREE LITTLE KINGS. Giehrl. 0 25 

TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT. Mother Salome. 0 85 

TOM LOSELY: BOtf. Copus. 0 85 

TOM’S LUCK-POT. Waggaman. 0 45 

TOM PLAYFAIR. Finn. 0 85 

TOORALLADDY. Walsh. 0 45 

TRANSPLANTING OF TESSIE. Waggaman. 0 60 

TREASURE OF NUGGET MOUNTAIN. Taggart. 0 85 

TWO LITTLE GIRLS. Mack. 0 45 

VIOLIN MAKER, THE. Schaching. 0 45 

WAGER OF GERALD O’ROURKE. Play adapted from a story by 

Father Finn. net, 0 35 

WAYWARD WINIFRED. Sadlier. 0 85 

WINNETOU THE APACHE KNIGHT. Taggart. 0 85 

WITCH OF RIDINGDALE. Bearne. 0 85 

WRONGFULLY ACCUSED. Herchenbach. 0 45 

YOUNG COLOR GUARD. Bonesteel. 0 45 


8 















































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APR 30 






